h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Posted Last Week by lj1980s

As ever Intern made me think about this book and where it should be posted. I could have equally posted it in romance and that wouldn't have been wrong because Birdsong is both a love story and a story of surviving the trenches in the WWI.

I borrowed this from a friend's bookshelf earlier in the week, thinking I'd heard mention of it and that I didn't fancy the next book I had pencilled in for myself. I was expecting the hard, gritty part about trench-warfare, the appalling waste of life and the incredible psychological trauma suffered by those experiencing it.

However, what I wasn't expecting was the tender and sexy love affair that frames the drama and gives it an historical depth and context that is carried throughout the book and allows the reader to both experience that occurring at the time and also to experience retrospect.

The main character Stephen is the young man visiting a family in Amiens in 1910, he's been orphaned and "championed" by a man who sees in him the charitable need to provide an education for a young man, but no understanding of fatherly love required to complete his charge's devotion to him. He stays in the house of a textile factory owner who is married to a woman much younger than himself, whom he does not treat as he should. Stephen is filled with love for her and is driven to possession, all of which takes place it feels in a slow motion orgy (easy boys!!) of touches, brushes, legs and arms before finally being consummated.

As is always the way with these things - and being a straight-forward type of gal it drives me mad - communication fails and the lovers manage to part through not understanding fully each other's motives and behaviour (how annoying is that - just like Pride and Prejudice!! Just talk to her!!!!)

After the lovers part, the next thing you see is a very different, older Stephen who has through his total lack of fear (for this read a total lack of care for his own fate), has been promoted to officer status although his men don't love him, because he can't love them - he feels nothing.

It is the contact from home, and the coping strategies of trench-warfare that the main part of the book encompasses. The fear and the numbness and the damage done to the humanity of the protagonists that stands out with enough blood and gore to keep Adrian happy, enough history and love for me - in lots of ways a very tender book for a man to have written, and that is very much to his credit - framing it as he does around the war story.

This isn't quite as long as I thought it would be and its a bit too hot to carry on, but hopefully as more people have read it (and i know Intern already has and has chapter 2 on book-mark too!!), people will add more to it.

Hope I posted in the right place intern - move it if you think it should be somewhere else

LJX

THE TIME TRAVELERS WIFE - AUDREY NIFFENEGGER


This is a beguiling book, almost from the first page I found it totally absorbing, the main characters are very well written and I liked them enormously - so much so that I cried at the end, mainly because I didn’t want the book to finish.
Basically this is a love story but is far from being run of the mill boy meets girl. For a start boy meets girl when he is thirty-six and she six, and that is the problem, in fact he is a man who has a genetic fault which causes him to go backwards and forwards in time . This is not, however a Sci-Fi novel and he cannot do wonderful things, in fact the whole process is very painful both physically and mentally for him and what makes the mental strain is the fact that he cannot change anything either in the past or the future. The fact that he travels through time is treated as a medical disorder so we don’t get into the realms of Sci-Fi and aliens which is what keeps this book grounded and believable.
In the beginning the story has a cosiness and a warmth but as the story unwinds little patches of darkness start to manifest themselves and the whole tenor changes you find yourself worrying about them, he for his physical wellbeing as sometimes the situations he finds himself in when he leaves the present are less than ideal, violence sometimes befalls him, she for her mental well being as their life together progresses. Also darkness gathers around what seems to be an idyllic family life and gradually, gradually you feel more for them as characters
The thing that keeps the story shining is undoubtedly the love that Henry and Clare have for each other and the way they deal with the situation.
The way it is written is also unusual - chapters are headed with the ages of Henry and Clare which enables the reader to keep track of the chronology and also is narrated by one or the other of them, sounds tricky and maybe messy but is not at all, it all falls into place very naturally.
I would recommend this book highly.

Superbly written LBP

Yep, me too LBP - really well written - I love this book, so I'll have a go at putting my two penneth in when I get my brains back from the cleaners or wherever they went!!

LJx