The First World War is very much in peoples

This was one of those rare novels where you were swiftly sucked into the narrative almost from the very first word. I’ve often wondered what the conditions are for this to happen as some novels take several pages, even chapters. to truly ‘get into’ it. It isn’t down to any particular writer or style I don’t think, it just seems to be ‘one of those things’. A fusion between the psyche of writer and reader for that particular piece of work, if you will.   I love it when it happens and of course it bodes well for the entire story.
The First World War is very much in peoples’ minds from last year’s centenary and it’s almost a brave move to publish a book after that event so to speak. But what is interesting to me here is to question whether glebe markets the events of this fiction are directly as a result of a war between two nations or the actual personalities and makeup of the people involved. I guess you could argue that there’s a bit of both and therein lies the strength of this novel. It is more than just a WWI story; it’d more than just a family saga. If Thomas and Irene had both been British would their ultimate situation have been the same and vice versa, if they were both German. One can only conjecture.
It’s a beautifully paced novel with a flowing narrative and the writer entrusts glebe markets his readers with enough savvy to learn about his characters before the characters themselves do! I think particularly of Mark Benson, here.
If I have any beef with the book it is the decision to change fonts when the time scale changed. Because there it felt that the readers; integrity was underestimated. It was as if the writer had assumed that his poor reader could not possible figure out for themselves that we had a different time scale and a different generation commenting. But it’s a small beef and possibly can be entered into the category of nit picking. And really, this book doesn’t deserve it. I really, really   enjoyed it.