Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks
Category: "Fiction - General"
Pages:402
Year of Publication:1995
Date Added:04/25/2008
Date Read:10/08/2007
Notes:Stephen Wraysford, as a young man, travels to France on business. He falls in love with Isabelle, the wife of his host, has a fling, and runs off with her. When Isabelle discovers she is pregnant, she runs away from Stephen, first to her sister Jeanne, and then eventually back to her husband. She doesn't tell Stephen about the child. WWI comes and Stephen sees a lot of action. While everyone he gets to know is eventually killed, Stephen somehow stays alive. On leave, he meets Jeanne and, briefly, Isabelle, who is now in love with a German soldier and who still doesn't tell Stephen about the baby. In the final days of the war, Stephen gets trapped underground and is finally rescued by Germans. By the time they reach the surface, the war is over. Stephen marries Jeanne and finally finds about his child with Isabelle. Isabelle dies of flu and the Stephen and Jeanne raise the child, a daughter. That child's daughter, Elizabeth, searches old diaries to learn about her grandfather, Stephen. As the book ends, she has a child of her own with some married guy she's having an affair with.
My Rating: 6

Reviews for Birdsong

Review - Birdsong

I guess, what I feel about it can be summed up by the fact that I read it a second time in 2023 and not once remembered that I'd read it before. There doesn't really seem to be a point. If it was just about Stephen, there was no reason to bring in Elizabeth, and certainly no reason for her to have a baby with a married man. If there was supposed to be something significant about hearing about the next generation, I missed it.

The account of life in the trenches was sad, disgusting, and probably realistic. But it dragged on too long without really going anywhere that I could see. The first part of the book, when Stephen was having his fling with Isabelle, was a lot more graphic than necessary.

Reviewed by Roger on 2023-08-26 19:59:34

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