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peterp3's review against another edition
5.0
Superb! Vera Brittain has written an extremely powerful memoir of her experience during the First World War - her hopes and dreams and losses. But beware: It’s totally heart-wrenching at times.
The 1914-1918 section is gripping, as expected, but the 1919-1920 section was interesting and surprising how she had to quickly adapt, because no one was interested in her wartime experience.
My own grandfather was the same age as Vera Brittain, and married in the same year, so it was interesting to compare his memoirs of the same years 1895-1925 (which I’ve just edited and published) with hers.
The 1914-1918 section is gripping, as expected, but the 1919-1920 section was interesting and surprising how she had to quickly adapt, because no one was interested in her wartime experience.
My own grandfather was the same age as Vera Brittain, and married in the same year, so it was interesting to compare his memoirs of the same years 1895-1925 (which I’ve just edited and published) with hers.
mary_juleyre's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
5.0
Besides the horrors and tragedies of WWI, which Miss Brittain experienced as nurse in Malta and the front in France, also a powerful manifesto of Feminism and women's access to academia at Oxford, bravo Vera!
paola_mobileread's review against another edition
4.0
I always thought of Testament of Youth as a war book, but this book is in fact much more than that - yes, the central part of the book (which consists of three parts) does recount Vera Brittain's first hand experience of the Western Front, where she served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, but this is also in fact the watershed between the society that was before, and the society to come after.
Surely Vera Brittain wasn't the only girl brought up in a wealthy upper middle class by Victorian parents whose wishes to see their daughters married well clashed with an inquisitive young mind's desire to do something other than fulfill their supporting role of mothers and wives in a male dominated society. But hers was the first generation of young women who could fill the vacuum created by the mass conscription of males to seize opportunities never before available.
The first two parts of the book are heartwrenching, her description of the war and of its consequences, of the shattering of the dreams and the lives, of the hopes, the portrat of the realization of the futility of it all are described incisively and beautifully. But besides the emotions stirred by this book, to me it is unashamedly feminist - though an uncommon sort of feminism, as class seeps through it. For instance a not yet 22 years old Vera returning home after seeing her fiance going off to the front complains that
I have to agree with Mark Bostridge who in the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition writes
But I disagree with the scolding tone implied in this judgment: it must have been a Herculean task to go so much against the tide in those days. She was on a mission, with her future husband also recognising and accepting that her work was more important to her than marriage. We don't see much of "G.", but that little we see is rather impressive, and one can't discount the importance of his support (and, I suspect, that of several maids!) in helping her carry out her project.
Surely Vera Brittain wasn't the only girl brought up in a wealthy upper middle class by Victorian parents whose wishes to see their daughters married well clashed with an inquisitive young mind's desire to do something other than fulfill their supporting role of mothers and wives in a male dominated society. But hers was the first generation of young women who could fill the vacuum created by the mass conscription of males to seize opportunities never before available.
The first two parts of the book are heartwrenching, her description of the war and of its consequences, of the shattering of the dreams and the lives, of the hopes, the portrat of the realization of the futility of it all are described incisively and beautifully. But besides the emotions stirred by this book, to me it is unashamedly feminist - though an uncommon sort of feminism, as class seeps through it. For instance a not yet 22 years old Vera returning home after seeing her fiance going off to the front complains that
Though the three maids had been unoccupied all evening, not one of them offered to help me unpack or to get me a cup of tea, and I was far too much absorbed in my misery to ask them for anything. It is 1915, but considering the book was written much later and this is not an excerpt from her diary at the time, it does sound an off note.
I have to agree with Mark Bostridge who in the introduction to the Penguin Classic edition writes
though she proposes a form of egalitarian marriage and other radical reforms, and despite the fact that she envisages herself as a modern woman, she remains at heart a product of her Victorian bourgeois background, and though to a lesser degree to his consideration that
much of the confidence and assurance of her autobiographical voice emanates from her passionate identification with her young male contemporaries and her experience of living vicariously through them.
But I disagree with the scolding tone implied in this judgment: it must have been a Herculean task to go so much against the tide in those days. She was on a mission, with her future husband also recognising and accepting that her work was more important to her than marriage. We don't see much of "G.", but that little we see is rather impressive, and one can't discount the importance of his support (and, I suspect, that of several maids!) in helping her carry out her project.
dnandrews797's review against another edition
4.0
While I read this in fits and starts, putting it down for a time when the plot would slow down, I think it’s a excellent novel about World War I from a perspective not often covered in war novels: that of women. Brittan’s struggle in her role as a nurse and her loss of most close friends, fiancée, and her brother is written about in beautifully tragic prose that really conveyed the magnitude of her loss and disillusionment characteristic of this time period. Though it slowed down towards the beginning and a bit at the end, overall it was a lovely experience and oddly relatable in these trying times.
leahreadsstuff's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
A fiercely feminist and quietly riveting depiction of the horrors and costs of war, and a moving memorial to an entire generation that never got to grow up.
artistmaybe's review against another edition
3.0
At the point where WW1 ended tuned out and lost interest. In parts of this book I felt that things jumped around within timelines too much and interfered with the flow of reading. I am going to admit I don't normally read biographies so my issues may be that it just was not a book for me.
widderwille's review against another edition
4.0
saw the film first with my dear friend and we were literally traumatized afterwards. it was so beautiful and touching so i had to read the book. but i didn't know how many pages it had before it was delivered. #shook. although it is not as long as "les misérables" or "gone with the wind" at that time it was a big one for me just as the harry potter books were. still i stuck through it. during reading it was kind of hard to understand most of it because it is written in an older english and me as a not-native reader already had a disadvantage. actually read it while i was in the north of france in which most of this true story is talking about (not primarily) so that made the whole thing even more emotional. i finished the book on the "Pont de Normandie", the bridge that (in my case) leads from the Bretagne to the Normandie (i'm writing in french on purpose). i cried. my parents even drove me to the cemetary where Roland is burried and that was jUST THE CHERRY ON TOP! it truly was an reading experience of a life time. will never forget it. war stories (and this one happened) are just so... unimaginable because it all lies in the past but it is important to understand what our ancestors lived through. it makes me even more sad that someday none of these people will be alive to tell. it will only live on books like this one.
megancortez's review against another edition
5.0
This is a simple story of a young girl who continues to live, even as so many (so, so many) of those around her die; a young girl who grows into a modern woman. She works to endure a horrible war as a nurse and is made to feel, viscerally, the impacts of this new violence, and grapple with a life so different than the one her upbringing had promised her.
This memoir evaluates the lacking solidity of reason of "heroism in the abstract" and the dissolution of chivalric values at the slaughter and cannibalism of the old world which was the First, the Great World War. It posits that this "modern war['s] only result must be the long reaping in sorrow of that which was sown in pride."
(Goodreads refreshed while I was typing up a really lovely, poignant review, and I hate my life because I lost it. I'll try and remember what I wrote and come back to edit this.)
This memoir evaluates the lacking solidity of reason of "heroism in the abstract" and the dissolution of chivalric values at the slaughter and cannibalism of the old world which was the First, the Great World War. It posits that this "modern war['s] only result must be the long reaping in sorrow of that which was sown in pride."
(Goodreads refreshed while I was typing up a really lovely, poignant review, and I hate my life because I lost it. I'll try and remember what I wrote and come back to edit this.)