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Format:Mass Market Paperback
A different view of the 1914-18 war, portraying a group of men who survived it, but were so mutilated that they could not live a normal life again. You may think you wouldn't want to read such a book, but it is saved from being gruesome by a bittersweet kind of humour. At the centre is a love story stemming from a meeting between a good-looking young officer, Fournier, and a girl, Clemence, who was actually seeing off her fiance to the front at the time of their encounter. She had loved Fournier's face - "votre visage si parfait" "Je n'oublierai pas le visage qui m'a enchante..." and it is this loved face which is smashed up in a war where many of its similarly maimed officers would have preferred death to the destruction of their faces, their hearing, their speech, their sight, their sense of smell, and their true selves.
The bonds that bind the group of afflicted men are movingly described. Their humour is peculiar to themselves and their injuries. There is an interesting account of the state of contemporary surgery and speech therapy. At the end - and of course I can reveal nothing of the course events take - I simply burst into tears, but they were warm tears for the survival of the spirit, of good people, and of laughter. This is one of those rare books in which you live the experience, and your tears come like a catharsis. The most telling line came from Weil, one of the group, who responds to the announcement of World War Two with the sardonic words "La der des der!" Yes, people had said the war of 1914 was to be the war to end all wars.
The bonds that bind the group of afflicted men are movingly described. Their humour is peculiar to themselves and their injuries. There is an interesting account of the state of contemporary surgery and speech therapy. At the end - and of course I can reveal nothing of the course events take - I simply burst into tears, but they were warm tears for the survival of the spirit, of good people, and of laughter. This is one of those rare books in which you live the experience, and your tears come like a catharsis. The most telling line came from Weil, one of the group, who responds to the announcement of World War Two with the sardonic words "La der des der!" Yes, people had said the war of 1914 was to be the war to end all wars.
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