Faulks’ ‘Birdsong’ is a book about WW1’s trench warfare surrounded by the heated love affair of the protagonist Stephen Wraysford with a married woman called Isabella. It takes on the perspective of both Stephen and later his granddaughter Elizabeth in 1978. Of all the war novels I have read this was one of the weakest, not many of the characters had enough substance for me to root for them whatsoever. The appeal of Isabelle to Stephen really didn’t make much sense as she offered very little for him to spend the novel pining over and her decisions make little sense and are largely for plot convenience, also noting the sex scenes between the couple were not the best written at all. 

Whilst the romance plot is never my cup of tea I didn’t find the war scenes that interesting either. Faulks’ characters are so stale minus maybe Stephen’s commanding officer Gray that the extent of death presented had little impact, and the majority of soldiers on both sides of the war are treated like cannon-fodder and completely dehumanised in places. The perspective of Elizabeth was handled even worse however, she was set up to have no knowledge of the war so she could go on a journey of discovery about her grandfather Stephen however her ignorance was completely unrealistic. How someone coming to the age of 40 in the 1980s could have never heard of the First World War or seen a war memorial whilst living in London is stupid and her revelations about how vast and tragic the conflict was felt so shallow and unbelievable. 

There were some nice quotes on morality and death and some descriptions were well written but that’s about all the flowers I can give this book.