Readers recommend WWI books

In honour of Remembrance Day, I’m reblogging a post from last year on WWI novels.

Not long ago, I asked readers what books they are reading about WWI. Through this blog, Facebook and Twitter I received quite a few responses and thought I would share them with you. Lots of reading options here. A few non-fiction or memoirs and many fiction. Some love or family stories wrapped around war, many gritty stories of the war itself and the lasting effects it had on those who served.

Before the Fall by Juliet West – “Beautifully wrought, utterly compelling and with a twist that will leave you breathless, Before The Fall, inspired by a true story, hurls you into a London torn apart by the First World War and paints a vivid and haunting portrait of one woman’s struggle.”

Wake by Anna Hope – “three women must deal with the aftershocks of WWI and its impact on the men in their lives—a son, a brother and a lover.”

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman – “Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to World War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn’t.”

Somme Mud by E.P.F Lynch – “Somme Mud tells of the devastating experiences of Edward Lynch, a young Australian private (18 when he enlisted) during the First World War when he served with the 45th battalion of the Australian Infantry Forces on the Western Front at the Somme, which saw the most bloody and costly fighting of the war.”

Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth – “Revealing the horror and heroism the creator of Middle-earth experienced as a young man, Tolkien and the Great War also introduces the close friends who spurred the modern world’s greatest mythology into life. It shows how the deaths of two comrades compelled Tolkien to pursue the dream they had shared”

Six Weeks by John Lewis-Stempel – “The average life expectancy of a subaltern in the trenches was a mere six weeks. In this remarkable book, John Lewis-Stempel focuses on the forgotten men who truly won Britain’s victory in the First World War – the subalterns, lieutenants and captains of the Army, the leaders in the trenches, the first ‘over the top’, the last to retreat.”

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally – “In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first near Gallipoli, then on the Western Front.”

In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl – “Iris followed her fifteen-year-old brother, Tom, to France in 1914 intending to bring him home. On her way to find Tom, Iris comes across the charismatic Miss Ivens, who is setting up a field hospital in the old abbey of Royaumont, north of Paris. Putting her fears aside, Iris decides to stay at Royaumont, and it is there that she truly comes of age, finding her capability and her strength, discovering her passion for medicine, making friends with the vivacious Violet and falling in love. But war is a brutal thing, and when the ultimate tragedy happens, there is a terrible price that Iris has to pay, a price that will echo down the generations.”

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain – “Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By war’s end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation.”

Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson – “Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford wants to travel the world, pursue a career, and marry for love. But in 1914, the stifling restrictions of aristocratic British society and her mother’s rigid expectations forbid Lily from following her heart. When war breaks out, the spirited young woman seizes her chance for independence. Defying her parents, she moves to London and eventually becomes an ambulance driver in the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.”

The Cartographer of No Man’s Land by P.S. Duffy – “From a village in Nova Scotia to the trenches of France, P. S. Duffy’s astonishing debut showcases a rare talent emerging in midlife. When his beloved brother-in-law goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and find him. Assured a position as a cartographer in London, he is instead sent directly into battle.”

The Girl You Left Behind by Jo Jo Moyes – “In 1916, French artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his wife Sophie to fight at the Front. When her town falls into German hands, his portrait of Sophie stirs the heart of the local Kommandant and causes her to risk everything – her family, reputation and life – in the hope of seeing her true love one last time.”

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith – “The United States Congress in 1929 passed legislation to fund travel for mothers of the fallen soldiers of World War I to visit their sons’ graves in France. Over the next three years, 6,693 Gold Star Mothers made the trip. In this emotionally charged, brilliantly realized novel, April Smith breathes life into a unique moment in American history, imagining the experience of five of these women.”

Au-Revoir la Haut by Pierre Lemaitre – this is my feeble translation of a Goodreads description in French – “After the Great War, Albert and Edouard quickly understand that their country doesn’t want them. Misfortune to the victors! France glorifies the dead and forgets the survivors. These two survivors of the inferno, Albert, who has lost everything, and Edouard, who is crushed by his family history, embark of a swindle of national proportions with absolute cynicism.”

The Last Summer by Kirsty Macleod – “Drawing heavily on memoirs and biographies from the Edwardian/Georgian period, McLeod offers a mosaic-portrait of English (mostly London-centered) life through the legendary summer of 1914, month by month: the intent, more or less, is to offer some balanced perspective on ‘the myth of the golden age and of the last golden summer’–a myth which has been periodically punctured in the decades since. Thus, McLeod reminds us that ‘the golden summer of the few in 1914 was guaranteed by the servitude of the many’.”

Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd – Bess Crawford is a WWI battlefield nurse and amateur sleuth.

Anne Perry’s WWI novels – Perry wrote five novels one for each year of the Great War. These novels follow the story of the Reavley family as they endure the war and gradually uncover “the sinister figure they call the Peacemaker, who is trying to undermine the public support for the struggle–and, as the Reavley family has good reason to believe, is in fact at the heart of a fantastic plot to reshape the entire world”.

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series – “The period of time from the mid-1900’s until the 1930’s was a time of unprecedented change in Britain. The devastation of The Great War, mass emigration to America and Canada, rapid social changes—not least votes for women—to be followed by the Roaring Twenties, the General Strike and the Depression. It was a time of burgeoning artistic expression, with the movements that we now know as Art Nouveau and Art Deco demonstrating a dramatic departure from the Victorian age … The Great War demanded that there was hardly a field of endeavor left untouched by a woman’s hand, so that men could be released for the battlefield … It is in this world that Maisie Dobbs came of age.” In 1929 she sets up her own private investigation agency. There are now 10 mysteries in the series. 

Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves – “In 1929 the author went to live abroad permanently, vowing ‘never to make England my home again’. This book is an account of his life up until that ‘bitter leave-taking’: from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life.”

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker by Louis Barthas – “Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. Barthas’ riveting wartime narrative, first published in France in 1978, presents the vivid, immediate experiences of a frontline soldier.”

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery – this is #8 in the Anne of Green Gables series – “Anne’s children were almost grown up, except for pretty, high-spirited Rilla. No one could resist her bright hazel eyes and dazzling smile. Rilla, almost fifteen, can’t think any further ahead than going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from handsome Kenneth Ford. But undreamed-of challenges await the irrepressible Rilla when the world of Ingleside becomes endangered by a far-off war. Her brothers go off to fight, and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen. She is swept into a drama that tests her courage and leaves her changed forever.”

During 2015, I’ve read a number of other novels set during either WWI or WWII:

• The Heroes Welcome by Louisa Young
• The Foundling’s War by Michel Deon
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• Death of a Century by Daniel Robinson

Please add your suggestions.

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction and blogs about all aspects of the genre at A Writer of History. Her latest novel, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE is set in WWI France and is available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. Her debut novel, UNRAVELLED: Two wars. Two affairs. One marriage. is also available from these retailers.

Mary can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.