Birdsong (novel) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

Birdsong is a 1993 war novel

War novel

A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...

by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

Sebastian Faulks

-Early life:Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire to Peter Faulks and Pamela . Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks, is his older brother. He was educated at Elstree School, Reading and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire...

. Faulks' fourth novel, it tells of a man called Stephen Wraysford at different stages of his life both before and during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Birdsong is part of a trilogy of novels by Sebastian Faulks which includes The Girl at the Lion d'Or

The Girl at the Lion D'or

The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks, was the author's second novel. Set in the tiny French village of Janvilliers in 1936. Together with Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, it makes up Faulks' France Trilogy...

and Charlotte Gray

Charlotte Gray (novel)

Charlotte Gray is a 1999 book by Sebastian Faulks and completes his loose trilogy of books about France with an account of the adventures of a young Scotswoman who becomes involved with the French resistance during the Second World War. It is set in Vichy France during World War II...

which are all linked through location, history and several minor characters.

The novel came 13th in a 2003 BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

survey called the Big Read

Big Read

The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time...

which aimed to find Britain's favourite book.
Birdsong has often been named Sebastian Faulks' best work of fiction- it received an 'also mentioned' credit in The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

s 2005 poll of critics and writers to find the Best British book of the last 25 years (1980–2005).

Unanswered Questions

Any info on the nature of conflict in Birdsong?

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Quotations

Jack already immune to death, let their white faces drift from his memory

p. 125

It is as though you stop living. Your mind goes dead

p. 136

He spoke no French and viewed all buildings, fields and churches as profoundly alien

p. 141

He blamed the NCOs, who blamed the officers; they swore at the staff officers who blamed the Generals

p. 141

He depended on the resilience of certain men to nerve himself to his unnatural life

p. 142

Perhaps in some way he did not understand, that was what the two officers had been doing: perhaps all that talk about life-drawing was just a way of pretending everything was normal

p. 142

This is not a war. It is an exploration of how far men can be degraded

p. 150

Although he had little idea of time, the burned images of the preceding days lived in his memory with static clarity

p. 157

What had taken place beneath that placid irregular roof seemed to belong to a world as peculiar and abnormal as the one in which he now lived

p. 158

Stephen was moved by the thought of his fellow countrymen fighting this foreign war

p. 161

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