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A review by sydsnot71
Testament Of Youth by Shirley Williams, Vera Brittain
3.0
This was a re-read for me, but I hadn't read it since probably 1990/1991 so I had forgotten much of it. I had forgotten how much of the book covers her life before the war and after. For me it is fixed in my brain as a book 'just' about WW1 and the horrific losses she experienced: her fiancé, her brother and two of her friends. And the grief.
However we get to see life before the war for the middle-class girl with ideas beyond just marriage and children. Brittain wants to be educated and we see her fight to do that and that takes us up to her attending Oxford. But when war breaks out Brittain eventually volunteers to be V.A.D and the book fills in her experiences both as a nurse in the UK and then in France and Malta. Again there are frustrations.
Brittain is also a feminist and her story fills in some of the battles that were fought on that front too. As the war goes on and the losses pile up it is heart breaking and Brittain writes about grief, loss, and guilt very well. When, towards the end of the book, she is about to get married she also talks about whether she is doing the right thing towards the dead.
There's early Labour Party politics, the League of Nations, travelling Europe post-war, including Germany.
It's much more than a WW1 book and that might effect how you respond to it. I enjoyed it on this second reading, but not quite as much as I did the first time.
However we get to see life before the war for the middle-class girl with ideas beyond just marriage and children. Brittain wants to be educated and we see her fight to do that and that takes us up to her attending Oxford. But when war breaks out Brittain eventually volunteers to be V.A.D and the book fills in her experiences both as a nurse in the UK and then in France and Malta. Again there are frustrations.
Brittain is also a feminist and her story fills in some of the battles that were fought on that front too. As the war goes on and the losses pile up it is heart breaking and Brittain writes about grief, loss, and guilt very well. When, towards the end of the book, she is about to get married she also talks about whether she is doing the right thing towards the dead.
There's early Labour Party politics, the League of Nations, travelling Europe post-war, including Germany.
It's much more than a WW1 book and that might effect how you respond to it. I enjoyed it on this second reading, but not quite as much as I did the first time.