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A review by enoughgaiety
Liza's England by Pat Barker
4.0
What tipped me over the edge from like to love was this passage:
He'd been a little thin boy with a head too big for his shoulders and sharp, dark eyes, sharp enough to prick. He was always getting left behind. Liza remembered him running down the street after the other boys, calling, "Wait. Wait for me." But they'd never waited. They'd gone off: to the playground, the river, the slag heap, the sea. And he was left to follow....
...[T]he attack that gave him a bullet in his throat had wiped a battalion out. He'd lain for three days in a shell-hole before he managed to crawl back to the British lines and ask for his regiment, only to be told that they were gone. Almost to a man. Gone. And as he was carried to the dressing station behind the lines perhaps he'd said, Wait. Wait for me.
It's haunted me for years.
He'd been a little thin boy with a head too big for his shoulders and sharp, dark eyes, sharp enough to prick. He was always getting left behind. Liza remembered him running down the street after the other boys, calling, "Wait. Wait for me." But they'd never waited. They'd gone off: to the playground, the river, the slag heap, the sea. And he was left to follow....
...[T]he attack that gave him a bullet in his throat had wiped a battalion out. He'd lain for three days in a shell-hole before he managed to crawl back to the British lines and ask for his regiment, only to be told that they were gone. Almost to a man. Gone. And as he was carried to the dressing station behind the lines perhaps he'd said, Wait. Wait for me.
It's haunted me for years.