Readers who are entranced by the sweeping Anglo sagas of Masterpiece Theatre will devour Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks's historical drama. A bestseller in England, there's even a little high-toned erotica thrown into the mix to convince the doubtful. The book's hero, a 20-year-old Englishman named Stephen Wraysford, finds his true love on a trip to Amiens in 1910. Unfortunately, she's already married, the wife of a wealthy textile baron. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of World War I. Birdsong derives most of its power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Wraysford's attempt to retain a scrap of humanity while surrounded by it. There is a simultaneous description of his present-day granddaughter's quest to read his diaries, which is designed to give some sense of perspective; this device is only somewhat successful. Nevertheless, Birdsong is an unflinching war story that is bookended by romances and a rewarding read.


From Publishers Weekly
In 1910, England's Stephen Wraysford, a junior executive in a textile firm, is sent by his company to northern France. There he falls for Isabelle Azaire, a young and beautiful matron who abandons her abusive husband and sticks by Stephen long enough to conceive a child. Six years later, Stephen is back in France, as a British officer fighting in the trenches. Facing death, embittered by isolation, he steels himself against thoughts of love. But despite rampant disease, harrowing tunnel explosions and desperate attacks on highly fortified German positions, he manages to survive, and to meet with Isabelle again. The emotions roiled up by this meeting, however, threaten to ruin him as a soldier. Everything about this novel, which was a bestseller in England, is outsized, from its epic, if occasionally ramshackle, narrative to its gruesome and utterly convincing descriptions of battlefield horrors. Faulks (A Fool's Alphabet) proves himself a grand storyteller here. Enlivened with considerable historical detail related through accomplished prose, his narrative flows with a pleasingly appropriate recklessness that brings his characters to dynamic life. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Faulks's (A Fool's Alphabet, LJ 4/15/93) story of an Englishman serving with the French army in World War I was a best seller in Britain for almost a year.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Michael Gorra
Birdsong seems to me superb. His prose is spare and precis.... Mr. Faulks's elaborate structure merely demonstrates how quickly innovation can be reduced to a formula. The present-day scenes in Birdsong are so lackluster that they seem a kind of injustice; I can scarcely believe they're the work of the same writer who in this book's best pages draws on Owen's great poem to provide a genuinely cathartic description of the war's last days.


From AudioFile
The sound of birdsong can scarcely penetrate the noise of battle in this book about the horrors of WWI. A valiant English officer witnesses them all: a headless, young soldier impaled on rolls of barbed wire, a cave-in of rubble with a single arm protruding. Such graphic writing, highly effective in print, gains even more force in audio. Peter Firth's skilled narration brings into brilliant focus, not only the reality of the carnage, but also the humanity and courage of the fighting men. Despite a weak denouement, BIRDSONG will move any listener who appreciates fine literature. J.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
In the travails of Stephen Wraysford, a British officer trapped in the troglodytic netherworld of the Great War's western front, readers will discover a convincingly rounded character whom the fates nearly grind into a nullity. But in Wraysford's being, despite the bestial filth of trenches, tunnels, and random death, an ember of self-preservation resists annihilation. And though several scenes skirt the melodramatic, as in a brotherly love armistice embrace with a German soldier, the author bracingly dramatizes survival in that war. From conveying the heart-pounding anxieties of leading men over the top, Faulks moves to soften Wraysford's increasingly cold fatalism with memories of his torrid prewar liaison with a French woman, Isabelle. The affair ruined her life but produced a child whose daughter furnishes Faulks' vehicle for flash-forwards to the 1970s, when that granddaughter becomes curious about who Wraysford was. As typical of the "lost generation" of Britain (where this novel was a best-seller), the Wraysford antihero realistically conveys what a waste--in lives and psyches--the trench experience was. A well-crafted glimpse into gloom. Gilbert Taylor


Review
"Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a prefect novel—just a great one."—Simon Schama, New Yorker

"An amazing book—among the most stirringly erotic I have read for years...I have read it and re-read it and can think of no other novel for many, many years that has so moved me or stimulated in me so much reflection on the human spirit."—Quentin Crewe, Daily Mail

"This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again."—Andrew James, Sunday Express

"One of the finest novels of the last 40 years."—Brian Masters, Mail on Sunday

"This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one's life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it."—Nigel Watts, Time Out


Review
"Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a prefect novel?just a great one."?Simon Schama, New Yorker

"An amazing book?among the most stirringly erotic I have read for years...I have read it and re-read it and can think of no other novel for many, many years that has so moved me or stimulated in me so much reflection on the human spirit."?Quentin Crewe, Daily Mail

"This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again."?Andrew James, Sunday Express

"One of the finest novels of the last 40 years."?Brian Masters, Mail on Sunday

"This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one's life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it."?Nigel Watts, Time Out


Book Description
Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come.


From the Publisher
Birdsong was voted one of the best books of the century in a poll conducted by Waterstone's booksellers and Channel Four TV in the United Kingdom. Here's a selection of the praise that has been pouring in:"Birdsong moved me more profoundly than anything I've read in years ... A deeply compassionate, utterly thrilling work by a master of the form."
-- Frank Conroy"The accounts of combat are among the finest I have ever read ... so powerful as to be almost unbearable ... a tribute to the author's remarkable skill and tact and dazzling virtuosity."
-- Los Angeles Times

"An amazing book ... among the most stirringly erotic I have read."
-- The Daily Mail (London)"Magnificent -- gorgeously written, deeply moving, rich in detail."
-- The Times (London) "Superb storytelling and craftsmanship ... a tribute to the durability of the human soul."
-- People"Vividly imagined ... this strenuous and poignant effort to shore up memory deserves our gratitude."
-- Newsday"Superb ... a genuinely cathartic description of the war's last days."
-- New York Times Book Review


From the Inside Flap
Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set before and during the Great War, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who journeys to France on business in 1910 and becomes so entangled in a passionate clandestine love affair that he never returns home. Rootless and heartbroken when war breaks out in 1914, he joins the army and is given command of a brigade of miners, whose macabre assignment is to tunnel beneath German lines and set off bombs under the enemy trenches - thereby creating a pitch-dark subterranean battlefield even more ghastly than the air and trench warfare above them. As have many lost young men, Stephen finds a place and an intense camaraderie in this tortuous world, and through his eyes Faulks reveals not only the unspeakable carnage but the unexpected love and loyalty that took place in the fields of France a mere two generations ago.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The British novelist "proves himself a grand storyteller" with this tale of WWI-era love and heartbreak, said PW. (June)

Library Journal

Faulks's (A Fool's Alphabet, LJ 4/15/93) story of an Englishman serving with the French army in World War I was a best seller in Britain for almost a year.

AudioFile - Jo Carr

The sound of birdsong can scarcely penetrate the noise of battle in this book about the horrors of WWI. A valiant English officer witnesses them all: a headless, young soldier impaled on rolls of barbed wire, a cave-in of rubble with a single arm protruding. Such graphic writing, highly effective in print, gains even more force in audio. Peter Firth's skilled narration brings into brilliant focus, not only the reality of the carnage, but also the humanity and courage of the fighting men. Despite a weak denouement, BIRDSONG will move any listener who appreciates fine literature. J.C. cAudioFile, Portland, Maine

George Garrett - Los Angeles Times Book Review

Worthy in every way of its honors and success￯﾿ﾽ.The accounts of combat, ringing with credibility and authenticity, are among the finest that I have ever read.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING