In Memoriam by Alice Winn
In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.
When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.
An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
REVIEWS
"One of the best debuts I've read in recent years: immersive, rousing, tender and devastating. In Memoriam is both a deeply moving love story and a visceral evocation of the Great War, impressively free of cliche. Winn makes such important points about class, destruction and the loss of innocence. I loved it with a startling ferocity." - Elizabeth Day
"A tender, affecting debut . . . Winn strikingly evokes the torment and brutality of life of the front ."― The Times
"A vivid rendering of love and frontline brutality in the first world war . . . In Memoriam is at once epic and intimate, humorous and profound, a vivid rendering of the madness and legacy of the first world war as seen through the lens of a schoolboy love affair . . . Acts of revenge, moonlit escapes from POW camps, serendipities just wild enough to be credible - all bound from the page with a clarity best described as cinematic, while even in the direst moments Winn's dialogue thrums with mirth and furious intelligence. Throughout, she artfully switches perspectives and settings, leaving the reader in desperate suspense over fates and fortunes". ― Observer
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 978-0241567838
Pages: 400