Book post: Birdsong
A 1993 book by Sebastian Faulks, about Stephen Wraysford, an orphan cum clothmerchant cum homewrecker cum infantry officer perpetually stationed in the line alongside a tunnelling corps. Focuses primarily on the tunnelling corps and their activities, with the obligatory couple of trips ‘over the top’ for Wraysford.
Cut for length, not spoilers.
I was initially disposed to like this book. It was given me by a good friend, in the gorgeous Vintage imprint seen to the left. The preface impressed me with Faulks’ thoughtfulness about his characters and how the story would set up point and counterpoint between the characters and time periods. There was also some interesting content in terms of the section set in Amiens before the war, and particularly around the tunnelling company’s activities.
However, despite this good start, I didn’t particularly enjoy Birdsong. Ultimately I think I enjoyed this book so little because it was fundamentally character-driven, with several wishy-washy plots that meandered around and ended when the novel ended, not because they’d found their natural conclusion. The plotline of Wraysford’s granddaughter discovering his diaries in 1978 was particularly weak (she read like a throwaway character, and the plot relied on melodrama).
It probably isn’t fair of me to hang my criticism on this point, since it is partly an issue of taste not quality; I am a genre reader consuming everything produced about an era which seems primarily to inspire ‘literary’ writers concerned with character study, c.f. Pat Barker’s Regeneration. I think more recent writers have taken their cue from the memoirists such as Robert Graves and Vera Brittain in terms of the type of story and style of narrative used - hence all those shell-shocked officer heroes. But whereas Graves, Brittain, Sassoon, Remarque, etc, were drawing from life, Faulks and Barker draw from a caricature of life based largely on a monochrome myth of WWI and life in the trenches. I don’t doubt Faulks’ research, or the authenticity of what he writes, but Birdsong offered me nothing that other authors hadn’t done earlier, and better.
One thing that particularly irritated me was the relentless, one-eyed proselytising about the Horror of War. Some of this is to be expected, but it is constant. Wraysford, according to the preface, was supposed to be created as a man with the characteristics that would allow him to get through the war more-or-less intact. Although Wraysford ‘talks the talk’ on this, his actions show him as falling into the aforementioned standard shellshocked officer type. Again, I am not objecting to the realism; I just don’t think Birdsong offers anything that other authors haven’t done better.
There is also nothing wrong with preaching the Horror of War. But whereas Wilfred Owen or Erich Maria Remarque show it to us, Faulks tells us all about it, then tells us how we should feel about it. For example, upon seeing the Thiepval memorial to the missing of the Somme, Wraysford’s granddaughter sinks to her knees and whispers, ‘why did no-one ever tell us?’.
Ultimately, to anyone thinking of reading this, I would suggest they read Robert Graves’ Good-bye to All That instead. Almost the same story, but without all the hand-wringing
This is my first book for the War Through the Generations 2012 WWI challenge.
