On the eve of the Great War, two British public school students — Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt — struggle with their feelings for each other, the pressure to enlist, and the waves of change that threaten to wash away the social hierarchies they’ve always known. Reunited on the Western Front, and then torn apart again, Ellwood and Gaunt are thrown in the dehumanizing, futile grinder of trench warfare, where glimmers of decency and love are rare and precious.
“In Memoriam” is an ambitious book, with its story augmented by letters to and from the front, lists of the dead and wounded as the war drags on, and snatches of poetry that become increasingly bleak. Life in the trenches — filthy and fraught, where only the blackest of humor offers relief — is presented in grim detail, contrasting sharply with the not-so-innocent hijinks of boarding school.
There are a few details that are bit too on-the-nose (references to Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft appear rather abruptly, and the “Maurice”-inspired conclusion feels a little rushed), but overall this book delivered the promised wartime angst and doomed love with tight, resonant writing and characters with strong and distinct voices. The historical research behind the story comes through in remarkable details that make this story of conflict and love a hundred years ago timely and resonant.
