Alwynne's Reviews > In Memoriam

Just before WW1, two idealistic boys meet at boarding school, they’re attracted to each other but don’t dare to admit it. In their world fumbling, casual sex between boys is sanctioned - as long as it remains hidden - but love’s completely out of the question. Worldly, Londoner Gaunt and innocent, country boy Ellwood are inseparable, sharing a fascination for poetry and the ancient Greeks. But then war breaks out and Gaunt’s German ancestry forces him to declare his loyalty to England by joining up and it’s not long before they’re both contending with the maelstrom of the trenches.

Alice Winn’s debut novel’s solid, well-researched, historical fiction with a queer slant, partly inspired by work like R. C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End. Winn’s narrative takes a while to take off, especially in the early stages when it moves between the boarding-school and the war in France. Inevitably too there are shades of Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker but Winn’s writing’s less self-consciously lyrical then Faulks and less considered than Barker’s.

Winn’s story’s very visual and quite dialogue heavy – her background’s in screenwriting. But it’s also unexpectedly inventive, an intriguing mash-up of genres from the literary to the cinematic, taking in the ripping yarns that inspired boys to fight and borrowing from the conventions of M/M romance to frame Gaunt and Ellwood’s unfolding relationship. It’s also pleasingly diverse highlighting the lesser-known groups who fought in WW1 from the Indian to the Algerian forces who served and, often, died on its battlefields. Some of this diversity can feel a little forced - Ellwood’s experience as a Jewish soldier, Gaunt’s German background foregrounding the losses on both sides - some of the characters can tip towards stock and some of the plot points are contrived. But as it unfolds the pace picks up and there are a number of surprisingly powerful episodes, as well as an entertaining Buchan-like air of derring-do driving later prison camp sequences. I’m not a fan of M/M romance so those elements of Gaunt and Ellwood’s love story didn’t really work for me, they felt a lot less authentic than Barker’s representations of queer experiences of WW1; and, like a lot of first novels, I felt this could have been edited down but overall, it’s a smart, vivid, fairly gripping piece that’s bound to have a wide appeal.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Viking/Penguin Random House for an ARC

Rating: 3/3.5