📖 Book Nostalgia on Hist Fic Saturday ~ The Absolutist by John Boyne

I'm really privileged to read so many latest release books which are so current they haven't even hit the book store shelves that I forget about the books which have influenced my reading over the years.

So, welcome to my mid-month Book Nostalgia feature where I'm allowing myself the luxury of going back in time with some of my favourite reads.

On Hist Fic Saturday

Let's wallow in book memories... and go back to 1917

Doubleday 
2011

During the years 2014 - 2018 I ran a weekly feature commemorating WW1. This included music, poetry and books set during the time. 

The Absolutist is one of the stories I read back in 2017, its effect on me was profound and deeply moving. It remains in my list of favourite novels about the First World War.

This is my book nostalgia read for Remembrance Weekend.

📖 What's it all about...

September 1919: Twenty-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a clutch of letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War. They trained together. They fought together.

But in 1917, Will laid down his guns on the battlefield and declared himself a conscientious objector, an act which brought shame and dishonour on the Bancroft family.

The letters, however, are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He holds a secret deep within him. One that he is desperate to unburden himself of to Marian, if he can only find the courage. Whatever happens, this meeting will change his life - forever.

Here are my thoughts, written when the book was first published in hardback in 2011...

From the start of The Absolutist, I was engrossed in Tristan and Will's story, and found myself really hurrying the pages to see what happened next.

The description of the time in the trenches is poignant, desperately sad, and hugely horrific, but never without tender philosophy.I loved both characters, and wanted everything to work out for them - but like all those who fought and died in the Great war, nothing would ever be the same again.

John Boyne is a master storyteller, who manages in a few short sentences to convey a complete world, and a time and place that really exists in your subconscious, with characters that come to life, and who live on in your memory, long after the last page is turned.

Beautifully narrated with a profound sadness which has stayed with me since I first met Tristan and Will. That's why I make no excuses for featuring again this excellent WW1 novel written by an author who is, always, at the top of my favourite historical novelists.

About the Author

John Boyne is an Irish novelist born in Dublin.  He has written novels for adults, children and a collection of short stories.

Twitter @john_boyne #TheAbsolutist #WW1

Review ~ Testament by Kim Sherwood

I always try to have a Remembrance Read on the go in November

Riverrun
12 July 2018

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

Her family was always complicated. It's why Eva was closest to her grandfather: a charismatic painter - and a keeper of secrets. So when he dies, she's hit by a greater loss - of the questions he never answered, and the past he never shared.

It's then she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They have uncovered the testimony he gave after his forced labour service in Hungary, which took him to the death camps and then to England as a refugee. This is how he survived.

But there is a deeper story that Eva will unravel - of how her grandfather learnt to live afterwards. As she confronts the lies that have haunted her family, their identity shifts and her own takes shape. The testament is in her hands.

My thoughts about it..

When Eva's beloved grandfather dies she's realises that his death brings about far more questions than it does answers for it would seem that Joseph Silk has not been entirely truthful about his experiences during the Second World War.

Skillfully blending the past with the present a story emerges of a dark and shadowy time when Joseph was forced to work in horrendous circumstances in a labour camp in Hungary. His survival, from this dreadful time, was something he carried with him for the rest of his life, and yet, he didn't want to be defined by the terrible things he had witnessed. After his death, certain documents come to light which reveal more details about Joseph's WW2 experiences, and following a trip to the Jewish Museum in Berlin to read these documents, Eva must come to terms with the secrets  her grandfather had kept hidden for so long. A  burden of secrets and heartbreaking memories which Joseph Silk had wanted to be kept hidden forever.

Testament is a beautifully written and very moving story about the trauma of living through the holocaust and of the guilt and confusion of being one of the survivors. It's about the terror of being displaced without the shelter of home and family, and of the uncertainty of making a new future when all seemed hopeless.

A commendable and poignant debut novel from a talented new writer.

About the Author

Kim Sherwood was born in Camden in 1989. She studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, going on to teach creative writing at UEA and the University of Sussex. Kim's stories and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Mslexia, Lighthouse, and Going Down Swinging. The manuscript of her debut novel, Testament, won the 2016 Bath Novel Award. Kim began writing Testament in 2011 after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away. In the same year, Kim's grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. These events provided seeds for a story that grew as Kim undertook research into the events of  the Holocaust in Hungary, and as extremism rose again across Europe.

Kim lives in Bath. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of the West of England. Testament is her first novel.

Twitter @kimtsherwood #Testament

@riverrunbooks @QuercusBooks

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

November is the month of remembrance

Since They Have Died

by 

May Wedderburn Cannan

Since they have died to give us gentleness,

And hearts kind with contentment and quiet mirth,

Let us who live also give happiness

And love, that’s born of pity, to the earth.

For, I have thought, some day they may lie sleeping

Forgetting all the weariness and pain,

And smile to think their world is in our keeping,

And laughter comes back to the earth again.

~****~

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

November is the Month of Remembrance

Now to be still and rest

by 

P H B Lyon

Now to be still and rest, while the heart remembers

All that is learned and loved in the days of long past,

To stoop and warm our hands at the fallen embers,

Glad to have come to the long way’s end at last.

Now to awake, and feel no regret at waking,

Knowing the shadowy days are white again,

To draw our curtains and watch the slow dawn breaking

Silver and grey on English field and lane.

Not to fulfil our dreams, in woods and meadows

Treading the well-loved paths – to pause and cry

‘So, even so I remember it’ – seeing the shadows

Weave on the distant hills their tapestry.

Nor to rejoice in children and join their laughter,

Tuning our hearts once more to the fairy strain,

To hear our names on voices we love, and after

Turn with a smile to sleep and our dream again.

Then – with a new-born strength, the sweet rest over,

Gladly to follow the great white road once more,

To work with a song on our lips and the heart of a lover,

Building a city of peace on the wastes of war.

~***~

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

November is the month of Remembrance

In Flanders Fields

By 

John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

On Remembrance Sunday in our family we remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919
Buried Ince Cemetery, Wigan, Lancashire

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium

Sunday WW1 Remembered...

 Remembrance Sunday 

Wigan Parish Church
©Digital Images

 Inspirational Female Poets of the Great War

Elizabeth Daryush

1887-1977

Born in the Oxford village of Boars Hill in 1877, Elizabeth Daryush was the daughter of British poet laureate, Robert Bridges. Privately educated by personal tutor, Elizabeth had a privileged upbringing in Victorian and Edwardian England.

She followed in her father’s footsteps concentrating on an Edwardian style of verse, one of her critics said this of her “Elizabeth Daryush appears rather like someone who has suddenly stepped out of the wrong century to find herself at the wrong party wearing the wrong clothes. There she stands in her brocades speaking her o'ers and 'twixts and 'tweens in her very proper accent. . . . But the effect of her presence is curious. Suddenly everyone's language sounds indecorous, full of improprieties and vulgarities."

Elizabeth was a prolific poet, however, she was frequently disparaged for her style of poetry which was often critical of the upper classes and of the social injustice inflicted upon others. Her early work has been compared to that of Thomas Hardy.

Daryush has been described as “ a pioneer technical innovator, a poet of the highest dedication and seriousness…”

This is her poem Flanders Fields which I thought appropriate for Remembrance Sunday

Here the scanted daisy glows

Glorious as the carmined rose;

Here the hill-top's verdure mean

Fair is with unfading green;

Here, where sorrow still must tread,

All her graves are garlanded.

And still, O glad passer-by

Of the fields of agony,

Lower laughter's voice, and bare

Thy head in the valley where

Poppies bright and rustling wheat

Are a desert to love's feet.

Wigan Cenotaph

©Digital Images

Today at Cenotaphs up and down the country wreaths of poppies will be laid in Remembrance of those who have lost their lives in conflict

Armistice Day 2016...

At "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918 the guns grew silent on the Western Front. The Armistice of Compiègne was signed between the Allies and Germany and went into effect at 11am, Paris time, on the 11th November 1918 .

On the 8th May 1919 a letter appeared in the London Evening News written by Australian journalist, Edward George Honey, who proposed that a respectful silence should be observed for those who had given their lives in the First World War. This article was brought to the attention of King George V and on the 7th November the king declared that...

"All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead."

Since 1919, on the second Sunday of November, otherwise known as Remembrance Sunday a two minute silence has been observed at 11am at war memorials, cenotaphs, religious services and shopping centres throughout the country.

Armistice Day 2016

Lest We Forget

In Our Family - We Remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919
Buried Wigan Cemetery

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium

Remembrance Sunday ~ WW1 Poet ..

Remembrance Sunday 

©Jo Barton

For the Fallen

By 

Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

***

 

In our family we remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919
Buried Ince Cemetery, Wigan, Lancashire

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium






~***~

Remembrance 2012...

Lest We Forget




We lay a wreath of poppies
To remember those who died
A Garland of red ribbon
To show the tears we cried
For lost ones and for loved ones
For those who gave their all
In battles and in trenches
In graveyards large and small.


We lay a wreath of poppies
To remember those who died
A cluster of red petals
For those we left behind
A laurel of remembrance
A sorry vale of tears
For generations lost and gone
We remember through the years.

© J. A. Barton

In Our Family - We Remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium