I mentioned on last weeks blog that the Agatha Christie didn’t last the week in Belgium however I did have a backup, although it turned out not to be as expected. I spotted War by Sebastian Faulks in a bookshop just before I left and thought it would be appropriate as I was based in Ypres for the week so surrounded by battlefields and cemeteries for the war dead of, mainly, combatants of World War One. I’ve been meaning to read something by Faulks for some time as his reputation led me to expect great things and I wasn’t to be disappointed in that regard. But if I had looked more closely I probably wouldn’t have bought this book as it turned out to be extracts from three of his novels, ‘Birdsong’, ‘Where My Heart Used to Beat’ and ‘A Week in December’ but at least it gave me a chance to try his works, which is presumably the idea. The books cover three different periods, ‘Birdsong’ is set during World War One, ‘Where My Heart Used to Beat’ is World War Two and ‘A Week in December’ is modern times Muslim jihad terrorism in London.

Let’s start with ‘Birdsong’, the extract is forty five pages of an over five hundred page work first published in 1994 and whilst the novel focuses on, Stephen Wraysford, a young officer in the Great War, the extract in ‘War’ deals largely with Private Jack Firebrace, an ex miner who is tunnelling out from the trenches through no man’s land to undermine or bomb the German positions. This is of course extremely dangerous, not just from possible collapse of the damp soil but from enemy shelling and the ever present possibilities of meeting German’s coming the other way. The book is wonderfully written, it’s no surprise to discover that it is probably Faulk’s best known work as the extract drew me in to the claustrophobic existence of the tunnellers and the awful conditions in the trenches. The first paragraph of the extract gives a feel for the novel:

JACK FIREBRACE lay forty-five feet underground, with several hundred thousand tons of France above his face. He could hear the wooden wheezing of the the feed that pumped air through the tunnel. Most of it was exhausted by the time it reached him. His back was supported by a wooden cross, his feet against the clay, facing towards the enemy. With an adapted spade, he loosened quantities of soil into a bag which he passed back to Evans, his mate, who then crawled away in the darkness. Jack could hear the hammering of timbers being used to shore up the tunnel further back, though where he worked, at the face, there was no guarantee that the clay would hold.

After a hard days digging Jack was expecting a rest but was put on guard duty instead due to shortage of men. However exhaustion overtook him and he fell asleep where he was discovered and condemned to be shot at dawn for desertion of duty such was the black and white horror of World War One.

The extract that follows from ‘Where My Heart Used to Beat’ is fifty eight pages from three hundred and fifty so more representative and roughly a sixth of the entire original book, which first appeared in 2016. The action in the extract takes a first person narrative of a newly commissioned officer during World War Two who is part of the British Expeditionary Force, that strange time before it was known as the British army in WWII and is forced to retreat to Dunkirk for the great small boats rescue. On his way specifically mentioning passing through Poperinge, just a few miles from where I was sitting in Ypres reading the book and where we had been the day before. This sudden intrusion into my modern experience was remarkably evocative as I imagined the hardship of the troops passing through the now lovely fields in this part of Flanders. Again it is beautifully written and when the unit are back in combat, this time fighting their way through Italy to Monte Cassino in the push to get the Germans out of Italy you really feel you are alongside the men as you are totally pulled into the narrative.

The third extract from ‘A Week in December’ is just twenty eight pages out of four hundred and the book was first published in 2009 but set in December 2007. The book itself is a satirical dealing with the money men of the City of London that were about to pull everything down in the great financial crash of 2008 and focuses on seven characters with the main one being the hedge fund manager John Veals. However the extract doesn’t mention him of five of the others being instead the story of Hassan al-Rashid whose Muslim faith has got him involved in extremism to the point that he agrees to be part of a bombing of a London hospital. I’m intrigued how this fits into the entire work so I’ll almost certainly have to read the full book at some point but of the three ‘Birdsong’ is top of my list to search out closely followed by ‘Where My Heart Used to Beat’, I definitely need to read more Sebastian Faulks.