- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (9 Nov 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1861591772
- ISBN-13: 978-1861591777
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 898,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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This short novel, Dugain's first, was written for his grandfather and richly deserved the many literary prizes it received. Adrien, a young officer, begins his account of the 1914-18 war by claiming that he knows nothing of the trenches, the mud or the stench. This is true, for his face was shattered by a German shell in the very first days of the campaign. With other disfigured officers, he spends the war years in the Val de Grace military hospital in Paris being operated on time after time in attempts to rebuild the missing tissue and bones. He is the first patient but soon the ward fills up with other sufferers all needing bone or skin grafts, prostheses and protracted treatment. Some men die there and others long to commit suicide but Adrien and his fellow veterans do their best to keep the patients hope alive and, in doing so, form a bond of friendship which will last them all their days. Such horrors do not make for easy reading but the sober tone avoids sensationalism and there is even humour and a happy ending. (Kirkus UK)
First-novelist Dugain's return to WWI, winner of the Prix des Libraires, offers quietly extended moments of seeming authenticity, then ends not in ashes but in soap. In 1914, Adrian Fournier is 24, a civil engineer-and an officer. In his first day at the front, before the fighting has really even begun, he's told to scout for locations along the Meuse where bridges can be built-but he doesn't get far. Just as he's gotten off his horse, the two men with him are killed and he himself is wounded hideously, never having even seen the enemy. His injury is "maxillofacial," a wound to the face-or, more exactly, the loss of the whole center part "of "his face. He becomes the first patient in the wing of the Val de Grace military hospital set aside for officers with this dreadful type of wound. There he'll stay for the duration, in fact until April of 1919, undergoing a total of 16 operations (though his face "still did not look human") and pondering how to go on with life afterward. As the ward fills, he becomes a kind of respected senior figure along with two others-Weil and Penanster-who remain patients as long as he does and with whom he becomes lifelong friends. There's a woman in the picture also-Fournier met her only once, the night before he went to the front. Will she remember him? Will his appalling wound make love impossible? Weil counsels that sexual love is over for men with wounds like theirs-but could he be wrong? The love melodrama, though, poses fewer troubles for the reader than does the inexplicable good cheer of these ruined men, feted by the state apparatus that even now "still "hasn't embittered them ("It was a great day, and I came away convinced that this had indeed been the war to end all wars"). Curiously light, an herbal teacup of the grim horrors drunk by the gallon by predecessors long ago. (Kirkus Reviews)
First-novelist Dugain's return to WWI, winner of the Prix des Libraires, offers quietly extended moments of seeming authenticity, then ends not in ashes but in soap. In 1914, Adrian Fournier is 24, a civil engineer-and an officer. In his first day at the front, before the fighting has really even begun, he's told to scout for locations along the Meuse where bridges can be built-but he doesn't get far. Just as he's gotten off his horse, the two men with him are killed and he himself is wounded hideously, never having even seen the enemy. His injury is "maxillofacial," a wound to the face-or, more exactly, the loss of the whole center part "of "his face. He becomes the first patient in the wing of the Val de Grace military hospital set aside for officers with this dreadful type of wound. There he'll stay for the duration, in fact until April of 1919, undergoing a total of 16 operations (though his face "still did not look human") and pondering how to go on with life afterward. As the ward fills, he becomes a kind of respected senior figure along with two others-Weil and Penanster-who remain patients as long as he does and with whom he becomes lifelong friends. There's a woman in the picture also-Fournier met her only once, the night before he went to the front. Will she remember him? Will his appalling wound make love impossible? Weil counsels that sexual love is over for men with wounds like theirs-but could he be wrong? The love melodrama, though, poses fewer troubles for the reader than does the inexplicable good cheer of these ruined men, feted by the state apparatus that even now "still "hasn't embittered them ("It was a great day, and I came away convinced that this had indeed been the war to end all wars"). Curiously light, an herbal teacup of the grim horrors drunk by the gallon by predecessors long ago. (Kirkus Reviews)
Product Description
'The First World War? I wasn't there. The muddy trench, the bone-piercing dampness, the black winter rats, the smell of cigarettes and shit, the rain constantly pouring out of God's steely sky - that wasn't the war I knew.' In the officers' ward of a hospital in Paris, three young men and a woman meet in the early days of the First World War. Each of them has suffered horrific injuries to the face: Adrien, the narrator, Penanster, a Breton aristocrat, Weil, a Jewish aviator, and Marguerite, a nurse, one of the few women in the hospital. The friendship that the four form sustains them through the months and years that follow. When the war ends they are released from hospital, to adapt as they can to life outside. Based on the true war experiences of the author's grandfather, this is a moving, humorous and humane novel about war and survival.
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First Sentence
I KNEW nothing of the Great War. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I KNEW nothing of the Great War. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and impossible to put down.,
By jfrfbennett@supanet.com (St Albans, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Hardcover)
This is a fantastic novel, the best I have read in years, and I found it impossible to put down. The author tells the story of a young French army officer injured in the first days of the First World War and his subsequent stay in a ward set aside for officers with facial injuries. The book is a short one, 130 pages, but the author tells more of the real horror and effects of war than many a longer novel. All of the characters are perfectly portrayed. But, the story is not a sad one. The "hero" and his fellow officers strive to overcome their injuries and the story of the bond that grows between them is moving and uplifting. There is not a wasted word is this unforgettable novel.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb!,
By
This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Hardcover)
This short story is simply yet beautifully told. I have not read the original French version but Howard Curtis' translation is excellent. The novel makes you reflect on the uselessness and futility of war but it never becomes morbid or depressing to an extent you don't want to continue. The message here is that, despite sufferering terrible injuries, qualities such as humour, friendship and love can prevail. One of the best books I have read in a long time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece,
By
This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Paperback)
A book about friendship and hope. Adrien Fournier is seriously wounded in the first days of the Great War. It isn't the traditional tidy wound of fiction; it rips a large part of his face away and Fournier's war takes place a long way from the trenches, as doctors mend his broken face. It isn't all about pain and operations though, he has time to form deep friendships with two other officers - Penanster a Breton cavalry officer and Weil, a badly burned pilot who demands "I want a nose. Not a little nose, a proper Jewish nose." Later they add Marguerite, a badly wounded nurse to the circle.
Life in hospital is full of incident. They play cards, support the other wounded, avoid their families and try, with mixed success, to re-enter the world. In 1919 they leave hospital and the final fifth of the book deals with their normalisation. They find a life and come to terms with their disabilities and losses. The world, we see, finds it harder to come to terms with them. In 1939 their lives change once more, particularly for Weil and his family, but when the war ends they find a new generation that needs their help. Dugain has a deceptively simple style, saying much with few words and leaving a lingering impression. With a good eye for detail and the discipline to avoid cliché and mawkishness, he has produced a book of power, authority and beauty. If you only want to read one modern novel about the Great War read this one.
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