Alice Winn (1)Reseñas

[3.5] Don’t let my middling star rating dissuade you from reading “In Memoriam” if you’re a fan of war-set sagas. Unfortunately, I’ve rarely connected with this genre. It’s true that Winn’s beautifully written debut novel explores the complexities of LGBTQ themes in the World War I era. She tells the story of two young men who fall in love during a tumultuous time period. The characters are multidimensional and memorable. The storyline is intriguing. But my inexplicable disinterest in war tales prevailed. But don’t mind me: I was among a minority of moviegoers the who grumbled “Meh” after seeing “Dunkirk,” “The Hurt Locker” and even Saving Private Ryan.” The first third of the novel was the most intriguing as the author explored the dynamics of several fascinating characters during their adventures in boarding school. The genesis of this creatively structured work is also fascinating. In an interview with The Guardian, Winn recalled that she was web surfing and found that her old school had uploaded its student newspapers from early last century. Winn noted that “the novel came pouring out of me in two weeks – then I spent a year and a half editing.”½

I had heard a lot of positive things from friends who'd read this and it didn't disappoint—a solid, often gripping, story of two British public school boys/young men each silently in love with the other who both enlist to fight during WWI. It's a very strong first novel, where you can see Winn exerting very careful control over the pacing so that it's not all carnage—but I did feel that when the story left the trenches it lost some energy, I suppose by virtue of how do you write non-action action that stands up to that. But I was still drawn in, and I thought she did a good job of keeping the love story not too sentimental, given the backdrop. Plus you've got to hand it to the author for taking on that war as subject matter in the first place—it was an ugly, out-of-scale conflict (I know, when are wars not).½

I’m the kind of reader who stops to journal or jot down perfunctory passages. With this book, though, I didn’t stop to catch my breath. I couldn’t. I was held captive from the first page and wasn’t released until I reached the very last page. This feels like more than a story, bigger than a single story. It has all the romanticism of poetry and all the violence of Greek tragedy and all of the humanity of Shakespearean verse. It’s a brutal and beautiful story that needs to be told—this story about schoolboys who assuredly march off to war only to return as apparitions of men they used to be—because even if you survive, “It’s so much harder to be left behind” (147).

Besides being an engrossing story, it’s filled with haunting in memoriams and requiem letters and lines of poetry, making the dirge move quickly. And in between all the lamentable details are unexpected moments of joy and hope and even laughter. And it’s this hope that keeps you hanging on until the very end.

If you’re a fan of If We Were Villains or The Song of Achilles, this will surely make it to the the top of your recent reads, as it has mine—so much so that I almost have no words (just a whole bunch of emotions). In the words of Ellwood, quoting my favorite King Lear character, Cordelia: “‘I cannot heave my heart into my mouth’” (373).

A poignant reminder about the horror and futility of war. I haven’t read such a powerful, sad WW1 story since Sebastian Faulk’s Birdsong. It is so incredibly hard to imagine what living in these times must have been like- thousands of young men slaughtered, or suffering with dreadful injuries, having been coerced into enlisting to “do the right thing” and convincing themselves it was noble to give their life for their country.
Amazing work for a debut novelist

I have a soft spot for WW1 historical fiction. It usually depicts the clash of old-world values with the complete carnage that industrialized warfare brings. This novel was successful in that portrayal, with a twist of gay romance, but overall it was a mixed bag, to be honest.

This is not an easy read by any account. When the novel opens, we are introduced to the bubble of English public school boys who spend their days wandering the lush English countryside reciting poetry. There is a bit of underdeveloped, soft, hazy romance between the two main characters which reminded me a bit of Andre Aciman's writing, so much so that I had Visions of Gideon playing in my head during those chapters as the perfect soundtrack.

At this point, the war had already started, but it was far and it was glorious as were the "in memoriam" bits written about their fallen schoolmates in their school newspaper.
One by one, the boys enlist and what follows is the brutal account of a horrible reality; Ypres, Laas, Somme.

For me, the novel dwindled at one point here and never really recovered to the quality it held from the opening until about a halfway point. The author did a lot of research and took inspiration from many other books and real historical people which is very evident in the writing if you are familiar with the topic. It does feel a little patchworkish at times and although not inconceivable in reality, some events took turns that felt very contrived in a book so focused on a small cast of characters.

Winn keeps throwing her characters around like pawns that have very little agency while history we know well slowly unravels in front of their eyes. I don't have a problem with that as long as it is contained to the described period. But, this novel is a work of 2023 and it is very evident in the treatment of the characters and themes. I see a problem in that, but many will not.

In Memoriam maybe doesn't have the aura of a classic but it fills the void for those who want an LGBT romance in a wartime setting. 3.5 stars rounded up.

Hauntingly Beautiful

It blows my mind that this is a debut novel, such is its sophistication in pulling you in and holding you there. In Memoriam is a novel about the complexities of a gay love affair between two young men at a boarding house of Marlborough College and then at the front in WWI at a time when homosexuality was a crime punishable with a prison term.

Winn captures how the young men were wont to hide their true homosexuality behind the boarding school practice of fagging, which was common in the period, and the difficulty of admitting their true feelings to each other until their life hangs in the balance at the front.

More than just a novel about a forbidden love, it is a dramatic and heartbreaking depiction of life on the front for young public school teenagers who had hitherto been cloistered in the safety of their boarding schools in the rolling green fields of England. Its title is derived from a mixture of the poem by Tennyson and the regular in memoriam notices that are published in the Preshute's boarding house's press bulletins.

Winn writes with such immense confidence about the period setting, both in the boarding school and on the battlefield, that she completely enfolds you and transports you to the era.

4.5 stars - this will definitely be up there as one of my favourite reads of 2024.½

Public school boys discover Having Feelings during WWI. This book utterly consumed me. Ate me up, spat me out, and I am better for it.

I didn't get far before it returned to the library, but what I did consume, consumed me. The magnetic and desperate connection between Elwood and Henry...

I'm passionate about this type of book - remember Vera Britain? - I was in love with her books in my 20s. Pat Barker?! Oh my gosh, the Regeneration Trilogy. - they were in my 40s.

I will get back to this novel one day and fall into the wretchedness of the trenches with these young men. This cut and paste is to remind of the book, when I do resume it.

"It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, all of whom are safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. They receive weekly dispatches from The Preshutian, their school newspaper, informing them of older classmates killed or wounded in action. Their heroic deaths only make the war more exciting. Gaunt, half-German, is busy fighting his own private battle- an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the gorgeous, rich, charming Ellwood-not having a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. Meanwhile, Gaunt's German mother and twin sister ask him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from the anti-German attacks they're already facing. Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, fueled by his education in Greek heroics and romantic wartime poetry. Before long, most of their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, the boys become intimately acquainted with the harsh realities of war. Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one other, but their friends are all dying, often in front of them, and no one knows when they'll be next"--½

A very fine debut novel telling the stories of a group of public schoolboys who become soldiers in WWI, threaded through with the romance of Henry Gaunt and Sydney Ellwood,

The tone and the era are finely tuned. The war is brutal, and the changes in those who take part evolve. You are deeply invested in all the characters.

Interview with the author:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/alice-winn-we-live-in-the-fossilis...

Heartbreaking and a riveting read. In the UK the book received Waterstones debut fiction prize for 2023 and was a Sunday Times Bestseller.½

I can identify a host of potential problems with this novel, but also, I absolutely loved it. I am always reading several books at a time, and tend to jump back and forth, but this is the book I wanted to be reading the whole time. It was urgent and immersive and I could not put it down.

Briefly, this follows Ellwood and Gaunt as they go from boarding school to the battlefields of WWI. This is gruesome and painful and depends upon real diaries of real soldiers to tell the stories of the wholesale slaughter of Allied soldiers -- trench warfare was much bloodier than what we have seen of war in the past 50 years. Elwood and Gaunt are lovers (in the emotional and physical sense) and their beautiful love, their world of poetry and trust and sex, illegal in its time, is the center around which this story is built. Mostly though, the book is about war, about the insanity of sending 17 and 18-year-old boys into battle where schoolyard rivalries and cruelties become deadly, killing some and destroying what is good in others. It is about how we define masculinity and class, and how destructive are those definitions. It is about the tolls of dying in battle and of living through it.

I cried more than once, and I am not a crier. Objectively there are things here that were manipulative in ways I don't usually like and which I complain about in other books, but I have zero complaints about them here. Off-hand comments about close families losing all of their sons one after the other, brutal cinematic killings of the kindest characters, and visible maiming of the most beautiful were knitted into the text at various points. I don't know if my "okayness" with these things is due to Winn's propulsive writing, or if it was because her depiction of war and of these characters were so well developed. Whatever the reasons my reactions felt authentic and I knew I would have had them even if she had not inserted those "kick the puppy" moments.

I listened to this book, and the narrator, Christian Coulson, was so very good. I am sure this is great in print, but I feel confident the reader added beauty and depth, and that I felt more intimately tied to Gaunt and Ellwood because of his performance.

Vivid (and I suspect unforgettable) story of Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood, in love as public school boys, separated and horribly damaged during World War I, where virtually every British school boy of that generation met his end. Both intimate and sweeping, the novel really is an achievement.

What I particularly love about this book is the ties that hold this group of public school boys from Preshute together through their schooling and into war ending up as officers. It is a tender love story set in the most brutal of places, war, in a time when men loving men was illegal.

Winn has researched and used the information well within the story, making it very believable. Henry Gaunt is as his name might suggest, tall and slightly awkward with a Bavarian mother who 'encourages' him into war because of their background. Sidney Ellwood quotes poetry, particularly Tennyson, in response to a question or just as part of the conversation. He is charming and much more at ease around others. Neither of them, however, is able to say how they feel about each other - it will take a war, many horrific events and moving to Brazil before they can do that properly.

There are adventures such as escaping from a camp, Ellwood believing that Gaunt is dead, meeting up with school friends such as Roseveare and Gideon Devi during the war but time and time again the book comes back to the In Memoriams written for the school newspaper about those who were killed. At one point the book even states that there is no one for Ellwood to write to any more because his friends are all dead. These lists of those from the school who died or are wounded bring up the horror of the never-ending loss of young lives. List after list all from one school. One generation.

Poetry runs throughout the book. The poem of the same name by Tennyson is focused on loss as is the book, balanced by what is gained between Ellwood and Gaunt. Its role in war is interesting, being partly responsible for this idealistic view of the romantic poet. War managed to wipe out poetry from Ellwood as part of his PTSD (not called that in those days - shell shock would be the name used) until the very end.

This is really a remarkable debut. I did get a little bored in the middle just before Gaunt and friends escaped from the prison of war camp, it was repetitive here, but the story reverted to the pressing narrative it started off as once they escaped.½

The story opens in 1914 in a residential public school in the English countryside. WWI rages on and many have their schoolmates and family members in service. The young students eagerly and impatiently wait to get their hands on the most recent issue of their school newspaper, The Preshutian, to peruse the lists of names of past students who have lost their lives or have been wounded on the front. Among the present students are Sidney Ellwood and Henry (Heinrich) Gaunt, who harbor feelings for one another but are unable to express the same. Henry is half-German and a pacifist but feels compelled to enlist for the sake of his family and to prove his loyalty to England. Being handed a white feather (meant to symbolize cowardice) in public by a young lady, despite his not being nineteen which was then the minimum age to enlist, prompts him to enlist as soon as becomes eligible. Ellwood, of Jewish descent, is a “poet” at heart but also signs up as soon as he is of age as do many of their classmates. The narrative follows Henry and Ellwood through WWI and its aftermath as they brave the violence and horrors of war, all the while navigating through their feelings for one another.

In Memoriam by Alice Winn transports us to the trenches of the Great War as we follow those young men who bravely served their country, putting their hopes and dreams on hold in the interest of the greater good. The narrative is non-linear but not difficult to follow. Interspersed throughout the narrative are correspondence between Ellwood and Gaunt and pages from The Preshutian, with the lists of those wounded, missing and those who were killed in action, with a poignant “In Memoriam” section comprising the obituaries of alumni who have lost their lives on the front. Lord Tennyson’s work is referenced multiple times throughout the narrative (the title of the book is taken from “In Memoriam A.H.H.)” with The Charge of the Light Brigade of particular significance. In describing the war effort, the author also alludes to social class distinction among the officers and references imperialist Britain and how colonization contributed to diversity within the ranks.

“We told those Algerians that their civilisation was no good, that they must have ours instead, we carried our white man’s burden dutifully, enlightening Indians—Indians! They who built the Taj Mahal! And Egyptians! For we knew better than their pyramids! We swarmed through Africa and America because we were better than they, of course we were, we were making war humane, and now it has broken down and they are dragged into hell with us.”

We meet several characters in the course of Henry and Ellwood’s journey, some for a longer duration than others, but each of them are important in how they are impacted what they experience. Not everyone will survive the war and for those who return, what they have experienced and witnessed will leave an indelible imprint on their lives. The author is unflinching in her depiction of both the the physical and emotional trauma that these young soldiers endure and how these experiences impact their perceptions of country and honor as well as their personal relationships and general worldview.

Author Alice Winn pays great attention to detail. The scenes from the trenches of Loos and Somme are vividly descriptive and heartbreaking but exquisitely written. This is a tender love story - a story of bravery and sacrifice - and also a coming-of-age tale wherein the author captures the camaraderie and the competitiveness among school friends and the innocence and hopefulness of boyhood beautifully and how a generation of young men (some as young as fifteen) were led to experience the harsh reality of a country at war, exposing them to horrors they could have never imagined. There are a few melodramatic moments but this does not detract from the overall reading experience.

“I actually believed that the principles of our civilisation, our civilisation that has developed further than any other in the history of the world, giving us telephones and trains and flying, for God’s sake, we can fly, I thought, surely such a civilisation, that prides itself on conquering the beast in man and seeks only to bend towards beauty and prosperity, surely, surely, surely, it would not shatter in such a vile and disgusting way. The Hague Convention sought to make war more humane. We had reached a point in history where we believed it was possible to make war humane. “

Please read the Author’s Note where she discusses the historical context and the people, places and true events that inspired this novel.

This is certainly one of the most compelling debut novels I have read this year. I can’t wait to read more from this talented new author.

A wonderful read. I could not put it down. Harrowing at times.

In autumn 1914, Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt are both 17, and in their Upper Sixth (final) year at a prestigious English boarding school. The school newspaper, The Preshutian, is suddenly dominated by lists of former students killed and injured in the early months of the First World War (which started in the summer) and In Memoriam pieces submitted by friends and family of some of the dead boys. The two boys and their classmates contribute to the newspaper, read and write poetry and debate everything passionately - and struggle with their sexual desires (at a time when homosexuality is illegal).

Gaunt is sceptical of this war and of much of the patriotic fervour expressed by classmates and others around - his mother is German and he has spent long summer holidays with his cousins in Bavaria. However, his mother is concerned that the family needs to show commitment to where they live and urges him to enlist. Ellwood follows Gaunt to the front.

This debut historical novel, about the tragedy and horror of WWI and the deaths of so many very young men, also a gay love story about two upper class young men, has been highly praised by many readers including other writers, and I think I had quite high expectations it didn't totally live up to. It is beautifully written and meticulously researched, but I think I found it a little long and overwritten in places. I also think it is hard for anything written now to live up to the best of the poetry, fiction and memoirs written both during WW! and after the war.

While I was slightly disappointed, I am interested in seeing what Alice Winn writes next.½

Alice Winn's In Memoriam is both heartbreaking and uplifting. It follows the lives of a group of British public (meaning private) school boys during WWI. There's immense privilege, unkindness, half-acknowledged affections, reconciliations, and the devastation of moving from imagining the glories of war to arriving at the front and witnessing one man after another die until it's one's own turn. At the heart of this novel are Gaunt and Ellsworth, close friends who have long been in love with each other—but because neither has the courage to acknowledge it, each is unaware of the other's feelings.

Right now, there seems to be a glut of WWII fiction. Moving back in time to WWI and that first "war to end all wars" somehow felt right. So many generations have their stories of cruel truths of celebrating war, and each teaches us the same lesson through very different details. In Memoriam gives us characters to care about deeply while keeping their limitations front and center—so we care, but aren't sure how much time we'd actually like to spend with them.

If you're up for a read that will likely have you in tears by the end, I strongly recommend In Memoriam.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.