In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Hey, who decided to read an unrelentingly sad book about World War I in February, which is one of the most (the most?) dreary months in the year? It was me!

In Memoriam by Alice Winn is the book. Spoiler: It was sad. 

Gaunt and Ellwood are living their best lives at Preshute, a posh boarding school in England. Okay, scratch that. It's World War I, they're gay and trying to hide it from their classmates, and seeing the names of dead classmates in their school newspaper is sort of exciting, but also terrifying. Gaunt, half-German, enlists when his family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face. Ellwood joins, as well, to follow Gaunt to the front. And then there's war. And gay sex. And a lot dead young men. Read at your own peril. (I mean, this is on me. What did I think this book was going to be about based on that title?) 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

He wasn’t surprised. Gaunt always fled when their friendship threatened to tilt into something more complicated. It was an uncomfortable, unspoken thing between them. Ellwood was in love with Gaunt. Gaunt was thoroughly decent and conventional. (location 597)

This is how we're introduced to them. We learn quickly that Ellwood has no idea what's going on with Gaunt. 

I can’t tell you how glad I am to be alive and young when we are. A war is what we needed: an injection of passion into a century of peace. (location 676)

It was interesting to read how romanticized the war was in the early part of the book when they were at school. I guess you have to convince young men that their deaths in war are worthy if they're going to die. 

You’ll never guess who is here—your old friend John Maitland. (location 725)

I know a man with this name. That's all. If he reads this, HI JOHN, although how would he read this? I don't know. Anyway, he's my aunt's nephew on the other side, so we're not related. I had a crush on him when I was a teenager, but he liked my cousin Melanie more. Oh, well. I've recovered. 

It was true that Ellwood found most things easy: people liked him, he was good at sports, good at lessons. He had never been seriously teased nor bullied, despite the obvious reasons he might have been. Gaunt, meanwhile, had struggled along until he got so tall and strong and impenetrable that no one could hurt him. Gaunt, in fact, represented the only real trial Ellwood had ever gone through. Unrequited love was a difficult thing to live with, but Ellwood managed because Gaunt needed him. (location 1767)

This makes it seem like more Ellwood is more self-aware than I think he is. Also, I don't know what to make of the people for whom everything seems to go their way and they suffer an obstacle and act like their the only ones who have ever had hard things in their life. 

Ellwood drummed his fingers on the table. “Is that what you fear most? Shell shock?” It was a common conversation. In 1913, you might ask a new acquaintance where he had gone to school, or what he did for a living. In 1916, it was this: what part of yourself did you most fear losing? (location 3014)

Very interesting. Do you fear losing your mind, your life, or a limb? 

The noise as they approached the front was unfathomable, but the larks continued to soar overhead in the mournful sky, and scarlet poppies drooped over the edges of the communication trenches. (location 4620)

This made me think of the following passage of Chapter Three from Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb: All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

“I spend my day hunting for my nightly list,” he wrote, a week before the Somme. “Here is today’s: 1. The tea was still hot when it got to the men, 2. I received your letter (joy!) and 3. I saw a finch twirling rapturously at sunrise. It is impossible to be discouraged with three such things to think about, even if the coming offensive is as red as the men fear.” (location 5264)

FIGs in the wild!

Sometimes Ellwood went to the window and watched women ride by on bicycles. Isn’t that nice, he thought, wishing them crashes and miscarriages. (location 5344)

I don't know why, but this line made me laugh out loud. I get Ellwood, I really do. 

As he lay in bed, Ellwood rigid and pretending to sleep beside him, Gaunt reflected that it did not feel like loving Ellwood. It felt like loving a brittle impostor, one who had stolen Ellwood and would not return him. And yet, Gaunt was powerless: he loved every part of Ellwood, changed or not. If there was a lonelier feeling, Gaunt could not imagine it. (location 5732)

I thought this passage was beautiful. 

Things I looked up:

Arthur Hallam had died at the age of twenty-two and Tennyson had spent the next seventeen years writing grief poetry. (location 191) - Arthur Henry Hallam (1811 – 1833) was an English poet, best known as the subject of a major work, In Memoriam, by his close friend and fellow poet Alfred Tennyson. 

Troilus and Criseyde tale (location 1087) - an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was probably completed during the mid-1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem, it is more self-contained than the better known but ultimately unfinished The Canterbury Tales. This poem is often considered the source of the phrase: "all good things must come to an end."

Edward II and Piers Gaveston (location 2207) - Gaveston (c. 1284 – 19 June 1312) was an English nobleman of Gascon origin, and the favorite of Edward II of England.  It was hinted at by medieval chroniclers, and has been alleged by some modern historians, that the relationship between Gaveston and Edward was sexual. The portrayal of Gaveston as homosexual continued in fictional portrayals, such as Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II from the early 1590s, and the 1924 adaptation of that work by Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger. Modern historians have been divided on the issue.

“I should never have learnt French if Mother hadn’t been friends with Alain-Fournier. Did you ever read Le Grand Meaulnes?” (location 2236) - (1886 – 914), known by the pseudonym Alain-Fournier, was a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been filmed twice and is considered a classic of French literature. The book is based partly on his childhood.

Russell’s “The Ethics of War” (location 2296) - Do you want to read it?  This 1915 essay, written with WWI in full swing, asks the question whether war is ever justified, and if so under what circumstances.

neurasthenia (location 3944) - a primarily historical diagnosis characterized by chronic, intense physical and mental exhaustion, fatigue after minor effort, and emotional irritability, often linked to stress

Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (location 4578) - a humorous novel by English writer Jerome describing a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction from the comic novel.

Rupert Brooke (location 5747) - I did know him because I looked him up when I read The Ministry of Time, but I just thought I'd add him because people have such strong opinions. 

Quintinshill crash, over two hundred men killed, soldiers (location 5796) - a multi-train rail crash which occurred on May 22, 1915 near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. It resulted in the deaths of over 200 people and remains the worst rail disaster in British history

Holzminden prison escape (location 6250) - Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp was a World War I prisoner-of-war camp for British and British Empire officers located in Holzminden, Lower Saxony, Germany. It opened in September 1917, and closed with the final repatriation of prisoners in December 1918. It is remembered as the location of the largest PoW escape of the war, in July 1918, when twenty-nine officers escaped through a tunnel, ten of whom evaded recapture and managed to make their way back to Britain.

Hat mentions (why hats?):

They were elegant creatures, with new London hats. (location 471)

...filled his hat with cherries (location 2228)

The old Frenchman let out a long breath, shouted a bit more, then touched his hat and disappeared. (location 2239)

"...We wear cloth fucking hats, Burgoyne!” (location 2512)

Ellwood took off his hat and stuck it out of the shell hole. (location 2655)

“The tricky thing is that we haven’t got the right hats,” said Devi, as they dressed. (location 4418)

They all three looked dirty and peculiar, clothed as they were in plain matching outfits, without hats. (location 4489)

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Do you like to read sad books in the heart of winter? Does it somehow suit the mood? Or does it make you sink into a winter related depression?