Title: In Memoriam

Author: Alice Finn

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Viking

Publication Date: 9th March 2023

Rating: 5/5

Cover:

Book Summary:

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.

When Gaunt’s mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.

Review:

I really don’t think I can do justice to quite how phenomenal In Memoriam is – but I will try my best. It is essentially a love story set in the midst of the First World War between two young men from the same boarding school in England. I have read a lot of war stories, although mostly from World War Two, however this has to be one of the most affecting and devastatingly heart wrenching accounts of the horror and trauma that millions of young men, often teenagers, faced during World War One. In Memoriam is harrowing, unflinchingly brutal and terrifying in its honesty about what soldiers on the front line experienced. It also sheds a light on the trauma and life long consequences for the few that managed to survive. Saying all that, this is somehow not a depressing book. It is tender, delicate and achingly moving in its depiction of the main characters, Gaunt and Ellwood, and their complicated, yet somehow simple in its devotion, relationship. I rarely find myself in tears over a book but In Memoriam managed it.

I genuinely find it staggering that this is a debut novel. It feels like a classic piece of literature already, I know it will stay in my mind forever. Alice Winn writes as if she was in the World War One trenches, which is obviously not the case, but it truly feels that immediate whilst reading. She somehow manages to extract a sense of beauty and love even in the darkest and most horrifying of circumstances. In Memoriam is a tour de force love story written with an assured elegance and depth. One of the best books I’ve ever read.

✶✶✶✶✶

Buy the book:

Waterstones | Blackwell’s | Amazon