Lots of ideas and switches in hopes and possibilities. As always historical fiction contains information that I did not know. Germans living in the UKLots of ideas and switches in hopes and possibilities. As always historical fiction contains information that I did not know. Germans living in the UK, some even naturalized, were interned during WWI. Although I got a little bored with the manners of rich vs not at the beginning, the events picked up and it was a good read until the end...more
The writing in the beginning is evocative: the young male college students arms are either 'lanky or doughy".
"And her hands - they were monstrous knoThe writing in the beginning is evocative: the young male college students arms are either 'lanky or doughy".
"And her hands - they were monstrous knobbed lumps, every knuckle misshapen and grotesque. They looked more like lobster claws than hands."
"My father died in 1912, of a heart b-blockage." It was a kind of blockage, getting stuck in the heart with a butcher knife wielded by a cuckolded husband.
The personalities and mannerisms of the characters of the are slowly and believably transformed by the events in the story. Eve's WWI story and Charlotte St Clair's 1947 story are presented in alternating chapters. This prevents any repetition of things revealed in conversations among the characters.
I wanted to see a map and check all the historical facts as I read and was pleased that there was a full explanation in an afterword. I found a map here
The women's issues from the period of WWI were sex and pregnancy outside marriage ,which was a problem after WWII, and access to personal finances for unmarried women. I don't know when that was improved.
The story skillfully uses multiple references to the poetry of Baudelaire to create a creepy atmosphere. I will have to follow-up on the poet. The non-Baudelaire poem phrase paraphrased toward the end was from W. B. Yeats "The Circus Animals Desertion".
My main complaint was the detailed sex scenes. I think they were included to appeal to some other audience or meet some other readers expectations rather than further the story or the character development.
- - - - addition - - - - read this with a book club and after the discussion I think I understand better the changes in Eve's personality. I also recall how little I cared about Charlie and how sappy the ending was. Overall this is a 'book club' pick, the research and background was good, too many holes and unbelievable coincidences, extaneous sex, and sappy ending....more
Rose McCaulay wrote this during the first world war, a time with many new agencies and rules. She imagines a even more governed world after the war enRose McCaulay wrote this during the first world war, a time with many new agencies and rules. She imagines a even more governed world after the war ends. The book was not published until 1918, and a note says she had to change a few things because of the result of the war but nothing in particular is identified.
Her fictional government newspaper the Hidden Hand was later used as a title for a book on the CIA but the idea of the hidden hand of government was probably an old idea at the time. "All other papers are so unreliable, so tiresome; a government must have one paper on which it can depend for unfailing support. So here was the Hidden Hand, and its readers had no excuse for ignorance of what the government desired them to think about its action." Unlike today, many other newspapers still existed and not everyone read the government one.
I read the copy on Gutenberg Genuinely funny and philosophical. ...more
Vignettes of individual UK stretcher-bearers, nurse, doctors, and chaplains who dealt with the enormous numbers of wounded and dying in WWI based on wVignettes of individual UK stretcher-bearers, nurse, doctors, and chaplains who dealt with the enormous numbers of wounded and dying in WWI based on written records in collections of military history and records of medical practice at the time....more
This book is a major commitment. I do not have a lot of familiarity with European history. I ended up with pages of notes and questions for further reThis book is a major commitment. I do not have a lot of familiarity with European history. I ended up with pages of notes and questions for further research.
At times my background knowledge combined with the text was not sufficient for me to make the leaps that the author did so I recorded these as "author's opinion". They just stood out in my reading. One example was Western admirers of communism were most enthralled during the height of Stalin's abuses and during Mao's Cultural Revolution. "... most seduced by the man and his cult. It was the absurdly large gap separating rhetoric from reality that made it so irresistible to men and women of goodwill in search of a cause."
He spent a lot of time explaining how European governments ended up with their social commitments and the opinion of Europeans about American law and social commitment. This was very interesting. He stated that in the French viewed "America was a land of hysterical puritans, given over to technology, standardization and conformism, beeft of originality of thought."
In the conclusion, he spent more time back on WWII and how public perception at the time of the issues and their importance was not the same as that drawn later from a historical perspective. It would be wonderful if people could take themselves out of the daily necessity of living and grasp that historical perception more often. He felt those who see things that way make better choices....more
This book attempts to disclose the many actions, especially on the part of the English, which resulted in the creation of the Middle East. Many times This book attempts to disclose the many actions, especially on the part of the English, which resulted in the creation of the Middle East. Many times the author will say something happened this way and this is very different from the way it was presented by officials at the time or by historians. He always cites the more recently available sources for his ideas. LESSON: don't believe everything you read in a history written close to an event even when everyone is being honest.
The thing that continually amazed me was the handicap people faced due to the time it took to communicate or travel. The lack of information about the area on the part of the English was astounding. A close second was the colonial mentality. The world is ours and we deserve it. Third place goes to the way a decision at the top gets twisted and adapted or totally ignored as it is passed down the chain of command and actually implemented. I no longer think you can say B happened because A ordered it unless A is standing next to B and supervising the process. Fourth it is amazing how little the probable presence of oil in the region seemed to enter into English calculations.
The Middle East is a mess and given this history it could have probably been even worse. As a follow-up I want to go further back in history and read about "The Great Game" with Russia which was frequently mentioned.
I am also curious about a 150 volume postwar survey by the Carnegie Endowment on the economic and social changes in 21 countries. This book says the work uncovered changes in "morals, politics, employment patterns, investment patterns, family structure, personal habits, language." I wonder if anyone has a condensed version....more
The damaged mind of the soldier and the completely different ideas of who he was according to the three women in the story held my attention for the fThe damaged mind of the soldier and the completely different ideas of who he was according to the three women in the story held my attention for the few hours it took to devour this book. The 'tremendous sense of class distinction' on the part of some characters and the superficiality of beauty and privilege are grating and I suppose they were meant to be.
"She was not so much a person as an implication of dreary poverty, like an open door in a mean house that lets out the smell of cooking cabbage and the screams of children." vs. of a table top arrangement of knick-knacks: "beside its air of being the coolly conceived and leisurely executed production of a hand and brain lifted by their rare quality to the service of the not absolutely necessary..."
As for women's issues, the book presents three completely different ideas of what a woman could be in the 1910s....more
Do not read the Introduction before reading the book. It contains spoilers. The Preface and the Foreword are safe. This is a true story with heavy useDo not read the Introduction before reading the book. It contains spoilers. The Preface and the Foreword are safe. This is a true story with heavy use of diaries and letters. Ms. Brittain also includes many poems by herself and others. The poems and the text are IMHO distinctly 19th century in style.
"During Preparation one wild autumn evening in St. Monica's gymnasium, when the wind shook the unsubstantial walls and a tiny crescent of moon, glimpsed through a skylight in the roof, scudded in and out of the flying clouds, I first read Shelley's "Adonais," which taught me in the most startling and impressive fashion of my childhood's experience to perceive beauty embodied in literature, and made me finally determine to become the writer that I had dreamed of being ever since I was seven years old. I still defy anyone, however "highbrow," to better the thrill of reading, for the first time and at sixteen, the too-familiar lines:"
The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly' Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity....
This a partial autobiography. It begins:
"When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans."
She only included events within her personal experience and from her point of view and she did not seem to have done any research in order to include material to expand the background of events. You can increase your enjoyment of the story by chasing down details as you come to them of all the unfamiliar writers, legislation and historical events which she mentions only in passing. The literary style was initially very annoying and there were lots of sentences that were so convoluted I had to read them twice. There are also the differences between American and British English and the differences in vocabulary from 1933 to the present to contend with.
"Although I was then more deeply concerned about universities than engagements, I shared the general hankering after an adult wardrobe which would be at least partly self-chosen, since all girls' clothing of the period appeared to be designed by their elders on the assumption that decency consisted in leaving exposed to the sun and air no part of the human body that could possibly be covered with flannel. In these later days [1930s], when I lie lazily sunning myself in a mere gesture of a bathing-suit on the gay plage of some small Riviera town - or even, during a clement summer, on the ultra-respectable shores of southern England - and watch the lean brown bodies of girl-children, almost naked and completely unashamed, leaping in and out of the water, I am seized with an angry resentment against the conventions of twenty years ago, which wrapped up my comely adolescent body in woollen combinations, black cashmere stockings, "liberty" bodice, dark stockinette knickers, flannel petticoat and often, in addition, a long-sleeved, high-necked, knitted woollen "Spencer.""
The feminist movement is important throughout Ms. Brittain's life. She began university in a period in which at Oxford:
"Diplomas in certain subjects, as health, education, geography, and political economy, are granted by Convocation after a certain period of study and an examinational test. These diplomas are obtainable by women students, who are not eligible for any degrees, although they may, and do, enter for the same examination as men. The halls of women students are entirely extra-collegiate; but women receive on examination certificates testifying to the class gained by them in such honour-examinations as they choose to undergo." per Catholic Encyclopedia
She and her friends are some of the first women to be awarded degrees. On the other hand:
The 1919 Sex Disqualification Removal Act was part of this first wave of [feminist] legislation; this act fundamentally argued “A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function�.
was hailed as a great step forward but especially after demobilization at the end of the war not actually enforced.
In 1933, this was thought to be the first story of WWI by a woman? If you can get used to the self-centered outlook and the language it is an ok read. I think I got more out of the fictional story about the Australian WWI nurses, The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally....more
Historical fiction account of two sisters who volunteer with the Australian nurses in WWI. Many interesting things about nursing, medicine, and the waHistorical fiction account of two sisters who volunteer with the Australian nurses in WWI. Many interesting things about nursing, medicine, and the war. I could not buy the 'angst' that the author was pedaling and the family background that gave rise to it was too vague for me to make sense of. What was the mother's problem with her life other than the final pain of disease? I also found no foundation for the sisters feelings on men and marriage and being close as sisters0.
Good (strange to me) vocabulary: - cow-cockies - small dairy farmers - ratbaggery - nonsense, eccentricity - larrikin - having a lark, running wild
Themes mentioned only in passing which I would have enjoyed seeing explored: - all that bush hypocrisy - residents of France who left the country vs. those who were planting fields near the front line - squatters in Australia - treatment of Irish in Australia...more
low four stars - written in 1913, set in the UK, concerning WWI - hero has a LOT of luck. Modern books rarely have so many lucky coincidences. There ilow four stars - written in 1913, set in the UK, concerning WWI - hero has a LOT of luck. Modern books rarely have so many lucky coincidences. There is, however, a fair amount of action and suspense.
"If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing."
This is not a cynical book nor is it a patriotic book; I just liked the sentence. I don't think most people take the time to analyze their enthusiasm for group or country and recognize its source....more
The author is in love with the Balkan area. On her first trip to Yugoslavia she finds "enormous, reassuring natural wealth of energy, intellect, spiriThe author is in love with the Balkan area. On her first trip to Yugoslavia she finds "enormous, reassuring natural wealth of energy, intellect, spirituality". Yugoslavia was a relatively new country (1918) comprised of areas of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia. She is amazingly widely read on world history - both European and Eastern. The book is 50% travelogue in 1937 (before WWII was called by that name but after the politics of Germany and Italy began to threaten their neighbors) and 50% history. The history ranges from the Roman Empire through the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire to current time. I am not expert in any of this to know whether her presentation is the standard one today or biased in some way by her enthusiasm. She had a very low opinion of the Germans she met.
The book is 1158 pages with small print. In general it was intriguing. There were very few places where the history overwhelmed and bogged down the flow. I think it was worth it. In the introduction it is pointed out that the story differs in some particulars from the notes in the author's diary. It is still interesting to see the insights she has from our post-WWII/post-Yugoslavian meltdown point of view.
Some of the insightful things I noted: "It is our weakness to think that distant people become civilized when we looked at them, that in their yesterdays they were brutish."
"... parts of Yugoslavia where there is still no trace of a class system, where there are only peasants..." These peasants owned their land unlike the serfs in feudal times in the west.
She was told that in one of these regions (now countries), "ninety percent of our university students were killed in the war [WWI]".
"Franz Ferdinand of Austria (murder--> WWI): "as he was heir to the throne, he could announce his policy only by the slow method of communicating it to private individuals." who then passed it on one by one almost like gossip. Because of this his intentions were misrepresented after his death.
"The Bulgarians were a people of other than Slav origin, being akin to Turks and Hungarians and Finns, but they were interpenetrated with Slav blood and spoke a Slav language."
About the Turks, "the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it."the Turks and their ability to find sensual pleasure in the most skimpy of settings...
"... the curious honesty of the Slav mind, by its refusal to dress up its inconsistencies and make them superficially acceptable to the rationalist censor . . . they let their myths and the criticism of it coexist in their minds..."...more
This short book should be on everyone's reading list. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Events in the life of a front-line German soldierThis short book should be on everyone's reading list. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Events in the life of a front-line German soldier during WWI are narrated as a plea for peace. We, one hundred years later, are still surrounded by conflicts and appear to have learned nothing.
I could fill a review with quotes. Just a few:
"We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us, Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall."
"We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place here."
"And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death."
On leave his father "wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way I find stupid and distressing; . . . I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?"
".. . life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought. It has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive of every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness."...more
The jacket notes say these stories were "written over a period of fifteen years'. The publication date in 1966. Unfortunately none are not dated. SomeThe jacket notes say these stories were "written over a period of fifteen years'. The publication date in 1966. Unfortunately none are not dated. Some deal with German war or post-war issues but most are not specifically German. They are all very 'light' - 'sparse'. One reviewer (bbbbbbrr) used the adjective bland and I agree. Some stories are just the setup of a place and time without any real action. I have not seen the German original but I am positive from the uses of some words that this is not a very good translation. I expected a lot more from a writer who lived through WWII in Germany and grappled with Nazis and Nazism....more
Strachan spent years researching and writing this book labeled Volume I: To Arms. I gave up at page 382 of 1139. I felt like I was interrupting the auStrachan spent years researching and writing this book labeled Volume I: To Arms. I gave up at page 382 of 1139. I felt like I was interrupting the author and reading his notes over his shoulder. It seemed like every discussion by every office-bound was detailed; every turn of every unit of the multitude of armies was mentioned by commander and cardinal direction. You cannot even tell which country the units represent when in the Russian-German front the commanders of two groups on the same side are named Francois and Mackensen. The information to understand these details are never given. I did not know, before starting, the sizes of all the subdivisions of armed forces in all the countries involved and the author does say they differ by country. What was I to make of statements like this: "Germany's success was defensive; the Russian army, despite the loss of 310,000 men in the opening six weeks, had not suffered a crippling blow." That is the total explanation given by the author. The introduction is the best part because there is some summarisation and analysis not just a core dump of details.
The overall impression left by the author is that everything was chaos and incompetence on the field and at home. "The soldiers who took part in it [battles around Marne] only knew its outcome from the direction in which they marched when they had ceased fighting." Briefly mentioned are the reasons field telegraphs were not effective, implementation of telephones still incomplete, radios not held by all groups in the field. Motor cars were occasionally used but the armies were much more dependent on railroads, horses and walking. I was and am really interested in the topic but in the end there were just too many pages of randomly named strangers leading groups of unknown size in different directions every day occasionally encountering other similarly detailed groups from the other side....more
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