Shadow of war

SOME seven years ago, my friend Shobita raved about a novel called Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. What with one thing and the other, I never got around to reading it, and the moment when it was fresh and new faded, and it passed from sight and interest.

But I kept running into people who had read and loved the book, and felt it would rank high among the best contemporary novels they had read. Such recommendations do not come easily in this age of easily disposable fiction, so I finally made the effort to get myself a copy.

More time passed before I could disentangle myself sufficiently from the various things I was involved in to read it, a feat I managed to achieve last week. So was the long wait worth it? Yes, a resounding yes, for Birdsong (Vintage) is an astonishing novel. The backdrop is war, the Great War to be precise.

Books about war are either very good or completely mawkish and awful. Birdsong fits easily into the first category and ranks with such great novels as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Catch 22, The Thin Red Line, From Here to Eternity and others.

It opens in France where a young English lodger, Stephen Wraysford, has fallen in love with the mistress of the house, Isabelle. Caught in the grip of insane desire, they elope, and spend a few ecstatic weeks together before Isabelle discovers that she is pregnant.

Consumed by guilt, she leaves Stephen without explanation. He hangs on in the small town where they have been living for a little while, but then decides it is time to move on, it is evident that Isabelle will not be returning.

Meanwhile the war has begun. Stephen toys with the idea of fighting with the French forces but decides he would feel more fulfilled bearing arms with his countrymen. He volunteers and is soon in the thick of action somewhere in Flanders.

It is 1916 and the war is at its peak. Wraysford is in charge of an infantry platoon which fights side by side with another group of men who tunnel through the earth preparing the ground for explosive charges. As the novel progress, we get to know some of these men - their pasts, their concerns, their experience of war.

As with all great novels about combat, Captain Weir and Jack Firebrace, Arthur Shaw and Bill Tyson among others soon establish a deep bond with the reader. We fear for them as they push on through the horrors of war, never knowing whether the next incoming shell will spell death for them but slogging on nevertheless, for the simple reason that they have no other option. There are no heroics in the reality of war, merely periods of boredom, rage, fear and pain.

And what of Stephen Wraysford? He is an enigmatic figure, not one the men in his command automatically empathise with, caught up as he is in his own concerns, but still someone they respect for he is never afraid to volunteer for the next mission or come to the aid of someone in trouble. He narrowly misses being killed on several occasions, but survives each time. And then he finds himself in a familiar part of France again, where a momentous encounter awaits him. We discover the rest of Wrayford's life through the eyes of his "grand-daughter" Elizabeth who is a modern career woman in London. Intrigued by her family's past, she has begun digging into the background of her mysterious grandfather and as the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit, the reader is rewarded with a very satisfying conclusion.

Birdsong is a traditional novel with all the ingredients that still mark the best examples of the genre: a solid plot, dramatic tension, humour, eroticism, great characters, and a vast historical sweep.

If, like me, you missed this novel when it first came out, don't hesitate to pick it up. It has already achieved classic status, and perhaps you will find yourself behaving like Andrew James of the Sunday Express who writes that he found the novel "so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again."

DAVID DAVIDAR

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Section  : Features
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