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Paul Bryant's Reviews > Birdsong
Birdsong
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Well I don’t think it was Sebastian Faulks� fault.
Although he did win the Bad Sex Award in 1998 � not for this book but for Charlotte Gray �
Meanwhile her ears were filled with the sound of a soft but frantic gasping and it was some time before she identified it as her own. ..... "This is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."
And the sex in Birdsong comes quite close
It was his tongue, lambent, hot, flickering over and inside her, turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh...
This is all in the first 100 pages set in 1910. After that comes the brutal life in the trenches, where flesh is actually disintegrated into a million fragments. Life under constant shelling is described in excruciating detail. Any friend you made there, you had to be prepared to find him carved in two at any moment. Ghastly. Unthinkable.
But half way through Birdsong I found I had reached World War One saturation point. Previously I read Regeneration, The Return of the Soldier, Goodbye to All That and then histories such as The Guns of August, The Donkeys, The Vanquished and Forgotten Victory � these are all excellent books.
And last year I saw All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) � very moving � and an almost forgotten 1925 silent movie The Big Parade, Hollywood’s first major statement about World War One � also surprisingly great. Not to mention Paths of Glory and La Grand Illusion, and, more up to date, the stunning 1917.
I didn't realise it but I had had too much of World War One. So. This is probably a good book, 99% of all the other reviews say so. But you have to pick the right books at the right time.
A slightly embarrassed 3 stars from me.
Although he did win the Bad Sex Award in 1998 � not for this book but for Charlotte Gray �
Meanwhile her ears were filled with the sound of a soft but frantic gasping and it was some time before she identified it as her own. ..... "This is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."
And the sex in Birdsong comes quite close
It was his tongue, lambent, hot, flickering over and inside her, turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh...
This is all in the first 100 pages set in 1910. After that comes the brutal life in the trenches, where flesh is actually disintegrated into a million fragments. Life under constant shelling is described in excruciating detail. Any friend you made there, you had to be prepared to find him carved in two at any moment. Ghastly. Unthinkable.
But half way through Birdsong I found I had reached World War One saturation point. Previously I read Regeneration, The Return of the Soldier, Goodbye to All That and then histories such as The Guns of August, The Donkeys, The Vanquished and Forgotten Victory � these are all excellent books.
And last year I saw All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) � very moving � and an almost forgotten 1925 silent movie The Big Parade, Hollywood’s first major statement about World War One � also surprisingly great. Not to mention Paths of Glory and La Grand Illusion, and, more up to date, the stunning 1917.
I didn't realise it but I had had too much of World War One. So. This is probably a good book, 99% of all the other reviews say so. But you have to pick the right books at the right time.
A slightly embarrassed 3 stars from me.
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Reading Progress
May 2, 2022
– Shelved
May 2, 2022
– Shelved as:
to-read-novels
August 18, 2024
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Started Reading
August 25, 2024
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abandoned
August 25, 2024
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novels
August 25, 2024
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Finished Reading
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Rebecca
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Aug 25, 2024 07:08AM
Yeah, overdoing a theme in one's lecture can ruin the taste of an individual work. Sometimes difficult to avoid when loosening the rein on a current interest but I try to force myself to ramble elsewhere when I sense I'm becoming obsessed with a topic so I don't get sick of it entirely.
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it's tricky because when you get caught up in something like WW1 you grab some books about it and then you feel you should read the last one because it's there on your shelf - I think that's what happened here.
Paul wrote: "it's tricky because when you get caught up in something like WW1 you grab some books about it and then you feel you should read the last one because it's there on your shelf - I think that's what h..." I'm in total empathy. Sigh. They do scream at you from the shelves, don't they? "You BOUGHT me, now you OWE me a read!"
Wow, I had not realized there was a Bad Sex award. Based on the excerpts you shared, Paul, I can see why Faulks won for Charlotte Gray. I enjoyed reading your thoughts about Birdsong.
I know what you mean... after reading very many accounts of the Holocaust, and novels where the camps are either central to or form an important part of the narrative, I can no longer do it even for reportedly excellent films or books. Perhaps an early experience at around 10 yo of seeing photographs of bodies piled high (at Belsen, iirc) and two visits to the Anne Frank house have made the subject all too painful. As for WW1 - I've only read some of the books you mention, and so found 'Birdsong' excellent - but the third book in that trilogy - Charlotte Gray - felt like a serious misjudgement. (His earlier The Girl at the Lion d'Or was very good.)
My own reading on WW1 includes Goodbye to all That and the short book All Quiet on the Western Front - perhaps you should make an exception there if you have only seen the film - it's probably the best I've read on that war. I was also much impressed by Frederic Manning's naughtily titled 'Her Privates We', though I read it at such a young age that I missed the joke, so... who knows.
(I can no longer bear to watch war films where people are blown to bits either, for that matter.)
I recently read his Girl at the Lion d'Or, it's fine though a bit ordinary, ultimately I can't be too harsh but found I didn't care all that much. No egregiously bad sex scenes at least.
