The must-read, Sunday Times bestselling First World War love story
[ About In Memoriam ]
It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in an idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt’s German mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.
The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him. In the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.
[ My Review ]
In Memoriam by Alice Winn published March 2023 with Viking and is described as ‘an epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip…a breathtaking debut.’
I am very late to reading this powerful debut and can honestly say that I was left bereft on completion. Many years ago I read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and the visceral images of trench warfare have never left me. Reading In Memoriam brought me to the same place but, I think, this time, my heart broke even more. Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood are seventeen years of age, on the cusp of adulthood with hopes and dreams to fulfil, when war breaks out. In the dormitories of their boarding school they swap stories of what they imagine to be the exciting life of a fighting soldier. They can create any scenario they desire because, from a distance, it’s easy to let the imagination run riot. Their elite school has a newsletter that all students access which includes the names of those deceased and injured during the conflict under a section entitled In Memoriam. The boys, all very much removed from the actual horrors of war, briefly remember those lost but life goes on within the halls of their educational facility.
Gaunt is the first of their close group to sign up. Of German extraction he is conflicted about this war but he is also struggling with another internal conflict, that of his confusing, yet ever present, desire for his best friend Sidney Ellwood. Within the boundaries of the school environment they become very close, trading secrets and ambitions for their respective lives. Quite tactile toward each other, they never quite cross that line, yet it’s no secret that relationships, either coerced or otherwise, do develop behind closed doors. When Gaunt eventually arrives to the front, what he witnesses and experiences is incomprehensible. He sends letters home but who could possibly describe on paper the barbarity of what transpired in those fields of death and the total disregard for what he thought were the rules of war. Gaunt had believed in ‘the principles of civilisation’, in his, as he very quickly discovered, naivety he had thought that the world ‘seeks only to bend toward beauty and prosperity’. How wrong he was…
‘It seems unfair, doesn’t it? Our parents got to live their whole lives without anything like this. Busily building up the world that led to this’
Familiar faces occasionally appear on the frontline but Gaunt soon becomes numb to any feeling, any connection. He has seen too much. He has lost too many. He has witnessed man’s inhumanity to man first-hand and is functioning on little sleep and plenty of alcohol. When Ellwood arrives to the trenches Gaunt is angry and initially is quite difficult for Ellwood to deal with but, as the horror continues to unfold before their eyes, they eventually grab poignant moments of peace together discovering their respective feeling for each other.
‘In the hypermasculine atmosphere of war, they were not over concerned with manliness’
As the months pass, both are witness to horrors beyond our comprehension, all vividly described by Alice Winn. Ellwood refers to the now common conversation where ‘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?’ . In Memoriam reminds us all of the barbaric nature of war and its impact on those involved, but it is also a very gentle story of a tentative relationship between two young men whose lives are hanging on by a thread.
‘It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children. It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century’
Powerful, compelling and absolutely soul-destroying, In Memoriam is a book that everyone should read. We live in such an unstable world right now with the reality of war facing communities on a daily basis. Following the devastation of World War 1, author H.G. Wells described it as ‘the war to end all wars’, a term which was adopted by many, all actively promoting a more peaceful and diplomatic existence between nations. But it seems that humans are unable to live in harmony, as Gaunt said in a letter to Ellwood –‘the Hague Convention sought to make war more humane. We had reached a point in history where we believed it was possible to make war humane’. How much has changed since then?
A forceful debut, In Memoriam is a sombre and emotive tale. A gut-wrenching and compassionate love story, a devastating and haunting read that hits hard.
‘No animal on earth would have suffered it. No creature would walk so knowingly,
so hopelessly, into the jaws of death’
[ Bio ]
Alice Winn lives in Brooklyn, where she writes screenplays. She grew up in Paris and was educated in British boarding schools. She has a degree in English Literature from Oxford University. IN MEMORIAM was her debut novel.
Lovely review! I was desperate to read this and bought the hardback when it came out, only to leave it languishing on my TBR pile ever since. I will get to it one day.
I was the same Nicola but decided enough!!! Well worth a push up the pile if you can. Thank you xx
Great review Mairead. It’s a powerful read for sure.