Faulks' writing is truly outstanding, the fear and hopelessness felt by the men is made vivid and terrifyingly portrayed. I believe there are novels that affect you long after you have closed the book and I do believe that this is one of them. It was fated for me to read this book (at least I believe it to be so) since as I walked into the library, this book was propped up on the shelf seeming to send a message saying take me home. I listened and am ever so grateful I did take this powerful book home and to heart. Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire, to Peter Faulks and Pamela (née Lawless). [1] His father was a decorated soldier (he won the Military Cross), who later became a solicitor and circuit judge. His brother Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks KC, a barrister, became a Conservative Government Minister in January 2014 in the Ministry of Justice. [2] His uncle was Sir Neville Faulks, a High Court judge. a b Sokołowska-Paryż, Marzena (2015). "Re-imagining the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in Contemporary British Writing". In Anna Branach-Kallas; Nelly Strehlau (eds.). Re-imagining the First World War: New Perspectives in Anglophone Literature and Culture. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp.92–109. ISBN 978-1-4438-8338-2. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 31 July 2021.

Halfway through the story we jump to 1978, where Elizabeth Benson has taken a sudden interest in her grandfather, Stephen Wraysford and the fate of the men who died in or limped home from the trenches of World War I. Here the narrative stumbles a bit. Elizabeth, now in her late 30s, seems entirely unaware of the horrors of The Great War. This rang utterly false. "No one told me," she says upon seeing the battlefields and monuments of the Somme. I think a British citizen of her generation would have been well aware of the magnitude of that war. But Faulks gives Elizabeth a strong voice and her own personal dilemmas that bring the existential quest for meaning and truth full circle. We don't stay in late 70s London for long, but we dip in and out until the novel's end as Elizabeth's story becomes woven into her grandfather's. As a child, Faulks attended Elstree School before moving on to Wellington College, where he was the top scholar in 1966. In 1970, he entered an open competition and won a place to read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1974. Stephen is a man almost broken by love and by war, but while some of his fellow-soldiers are happy to die, unable to comprehend the sights they have seen, Stephen becomes more and more determined to survive. In this, he is encouraged by Captain Gray. Their philosophical exchanges about what they have witnessed are terse, but Stephen gives fuller vent to his feelings in a coded diary, which he keeps in spite of military regulations. Because Faulks felt that much of the extant World War I literature was deeply influenced by World War II literature, he deliberately avoided research with secondary documents, such as historical monographs, instead focusing on veteran interviews and period primary sources. [ citation needed]

a b c Nikkhah, Roya (23 May 2010). "Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong to be made into West End play". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016 . Retrieved 30 August 2016. MacCallum-Stewart, Esther (1 January 2007). " "If they ask us why we died": Children's Literature and the First World War, 1970–2005". The Lion and the Unicorn. 31 (2): 176–188. doi: 10.1353/uni.2007.0022. ISSN 1080-6563. S2CID 145779652.

He was educated at Elstree School, Reading and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire. He read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he was made an Honorary Fellow in 2008. [3] [4] Whilst at Cambridge he participated in University Challenge, in which Emmanuel College lost in the opening round. Faulks commented that his team was most probably hampered by a trip to the pub before the show, as recommended by the show's producer. [5] Career [ edit ] a b c d e f g h i j Wheeler, Pat (26 June 2002). "The Novel's Reception". Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. Continuum Publishing International. pp.69–74. ISBN 0-8264-5323-6. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 4 September 2016. ETA to add link to segment aired on NPR 1/23/14 on digitized British World War I diaries. See below. Mullan, John (13 July 2012). "Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 23 September 2016 . Retrieved 30 August 2016.Narration is far more successful when characters voice it, especially in the bedroom scene between Stephen and Isabelle, in which they describe the physical act of passion in turn, and also in the final scenes between Stephen and a Jewish German soldier which brim with pain and poignancy. Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. a b "The Big Read – Top 100 Books". BBC. 2003. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012 . Retrieved 12 December 2010. I don't think Stephen's youthful love affair nor his granddaughter's story were nearly as convincing . Still, this is a moving, heart wrenching book and I definitely recommend it.

The final section is two generations later, Elizabeth is researching her family history, looking into her ancestors, in particular her grandfather, who left behind notebooks of his experiences. Hey! I was just setting out the book composition, this is a review of sorts, don't ya know! Alongside the fictionalised first-hand descriptions of the harsh reality of trench warfare, there's also depictions of: I would have no hesitation in recommending Birdsong to absolutely anyone, but most especially to any politician who is thinking about sending young people to their deaths in war. Miners laying charges for one of the mines on the Somme in 1916. These men were of a similar company to the characters represented in the novel. Amazing... 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' - The Daily MailCharlotte Gray was made into a 2001 Hollywood feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Gillian Armstrong. Birdsong book: summary An overpowering and beautiful novel... Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a perfect novel, just a great one' - Simon Schama, The New Yorker

In 2012 it was adapted as a two-part television drama for the BBC. [20] The production starred Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford and Clémence Poésy as Isabelle Azaire, and was directed by Philip Martin, based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan. The historian Edward Madigan favourably compared the television adaptation to Steven Spielberg's War Horse as a successful evocation of the experience of the World War I trenches. [20] In 2007, Faulks published Engleby. Set in Cambridge in the 1970s, it is narrated by Cambridge University fresher Mike Engleby. Engleby is a loner, and the reader is led to suspect that he may be unreliable, particularly when a fellow student disappears. Faulks says of the novel's genesis, "I woke up one morning with this guy's voice in my head. And he was just talking, dictating, almost. And when I got to work, I wrote it down. I didn't know what the hell was going on; this wasn't an idea for a book". [17] It was remarked upon as a change of direction for Faulks, both in terms of the near-contemporary setting and in the decision to use a first-person narrator. [19] The Daily Telegraph said the book was "distinguished by a remarkable intellectual energy: a narrative verve, technical mastery of the possibilities of the novel form and vivid sense of the tragic contingency of human life." [20]Gorra described the novel's split into parallel narratives as the critical fault in the reading experience of the novel. [9] For de Groot, however, the split structure provides one of the most sophisticated elements of the novel. [8] De Groot writes that Benson's investigation of personal history allows Faulks to examine the difference between the two perspectives on the memory, highlighting the "unknowability of the horror of war" and of history more generally. [8] Trauma [ edit ] Death surrounded British soldiers on the front line, often to the point of breaking their psychological endurance. Faulks explores this historical trauma, throughout the novel. Painting by C. R. W. Nevinson, 1917.