Book Review: To Arms! by Marcelle Tinayre

War is a terrible curse, but a man-made one that its advocates and profiteers always tried to sell as necessary to protect or restore the country’s safety, strength, honour, identity, or whatever else society sees at risk. More than once wars spread to other countries because of alliances made in times of peace. World War One is only one of the most notorious examples. When Emperor Francis Joseph I. of Austria-Hungary declared war to Serbia on 28 July 1914 it was the beginning of a chain reaction turning huge parts of Europe (and the world) into ghastly battlefields for over four years. As early as in summer 1915, the novel To Arms! by Marcelle Tinayre thematised the anxiety that a dissimilar group of Parisians lived in the last hours before France was drawn into the war and first soldiers left their families to move into their barracks.

Book Review: The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We all know that love in all its forms is not just a strong emotion but also a very important driving force in life. And it can outlast death so we like to call it eternal. The mere idea of it makes us dream and not least because of this quality, love has always been a favourite topic of authors and readers alike. Bestselling lists prove that the romance genre keeps being enormously popular – and also very diverse since it comprises works considered as shallow chick lit as well as highbrow literature. The classical novel The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier first published in 1931 is a sentimental family saga in the tradition of Emily Brontë. It recounts the lives of Janet Coombie and her descendants that through a hundred years remain connected and characterised just as much by a wandering as by a loving spirit passed on from generation to generation.

Book Review: Little Apple by Leo Perutz

According to an old and often quoted saying “Revenge is sweet”, but in reality it’s more likely that it’ll leave a rather bitter, not to say foul aftertaste. Moreover, the wish to restore justice taking revenge for endured suffering, damage or loss very easily becomes blind obsession that will inevitably end in disappointment after having caused pain or even ruin along the way. This is what the young protagonist of the short novel Little Apple by Prague-born Austrian writer Leo Perutz hasn’t yet learnt when he returns to his family in Vienna in autumn 1918. He survived the battlefields of World War I and two years in a Siberian prisoners-of-war camp, he isn’t able to close the chapter for good, though, because he vowed to take revenge for the humiliation, torment and terror that he and his comrades suffered from a sadistic camp commandant. Before long he sets out on a dangerous hunt through half of Europe.

Book Review: The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold

A scene of war is a scaring and depressing place. Often no house remains intact, no field safely arable and it seems impossible that the old hustle and bustle of life can ever return. These days we see it in Syria and other regions less present in the media, but not so long ago great parts of Europe were in ruins. Certain areas of France and Belgium were destroyed twice within less than half a century! Today many of the battlefields – what a harmless sounding word compared to German “Schlachtfeld” that has slaughter in it! – are well-kept places of remembrance, while they were nothing but craters and rubble right after World War I and II. The English novel The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold evokes the atmosphere of winter 1918/19, the first of peace after four years of carnage, through the eyes of a young woman driver in the service of the French army.

Book Review: Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Today is Good Friday and I thought that this might be the right moment to feature kind of a Christian read. The protagonist of the novel that I picked for my review is an Protestant missionary on a remote islet in the South Seas, but the plot revolves less around religion than it is about love and the harm that the influence of western civilisation can do, especially in combination with the belief in its supremacy. The topic undoubtedly is a serious one, and yet Mr. Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner isn’t a stern book at all. It’s a satire of missionary zeal to convert the savage to true faith and western life-style. The novel is set before the Great War of 1914-18 when there still were untouched spots on our planet, thus long before the world had shrunk to the size of a computer screen.

Book Review: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel

A hundred years ago, in 1915, the Young Turk government, that had seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, took advantage of the chaos of World War I to get rid of the Armenian population living in Eastern Anatolia. Thanks to the foot marches of several days with hardly any provisions the deportation to concentration camps in the Mesopotamian desert meant almost certain death from exhaustion and hunger – provided that people weren’t killed on the way by scoundrels seething of hatred and greed or even by their guards. However, six Armenian villages in the Syrian Hatay Province revolted against expulsion seeking refuge on Musa Dagh (Mount Moses), a natural fortress at the Gulf of Alexandrette, and a major work of Austrian literature, namely The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel which I’m reviewing today, gives fictional testimony of the events until the last-minute rescue of 4,200 men, women and children by French and British warships.

Book Review: Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The World War of 1914-18 brought not only radical changes regarding borders, governments and relations between countries, but it also had a lasting impact on people and society. An important, though controversial novel that shows how the war shadowed life and attitude of two average French combatants, and that I’m reviewing today for both the Books on France 2014 Reading Challenge and The Great War in Literature Special, is Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. The plot begins with the belligerent atmosphere before the war which led the French army into incredibly atrocious battles in Belgium. The narrating protagonist survives, but carrying the burden of what he has witnessed and participated in his soul remains in the gloom of a never-ending night.

Book Review: Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

What remains of a life? Which traces does a person leave behind when s/he is gone? Of course, there are things, but more importantly there are memories. Memories of occasions, of words and the voice in which they were said, of habits and gestures, of a typical odour or taste, of emotions linked with her or him… thus of bits and pieces that each taken for itself are of little importance. Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf, which I decided to review for my personal reading challenge The Great War in Literature, patches together a couple of insignificant scenes to paint the portrait of a young man getting to know life and just preparing to settle down when a beastly war swallows him up.

Virginia Woolf was born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in London, England/U.K., in January 1882. Her father was Sir Leslie Stephen, a renowned biographer, critic and mountaineer who taught his daughters at home and who influenced Virginia’s writing. After the deaths of her mother (1895) and her father (1904) she suffered nervous breakdowns, the first of many that were caused by what would probably be diagnosed as bipolar disorder today and the aftermaths of sexual abuse by her half-brother as a child. Virginia made her debut as an author in 1900 publishing personal reminiscences and essays, but she also ventured into fiction writing soon. In 1908 she began working on her first novel Melymbrosia which was published as The Voyage Out in 1915, three years after she had got married to Leonard Woolf. The couple founded Hogarth Press in 1917 and Virginia’s second novel, Night and Day (1919), appeared under its imprint. The novels Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941) followed along with several short-story collections and non-fiction work like the famous book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) or the biographies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog Flush (1933) and of Roger Fry (1940). During another mental crisis Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex, England/U.K., in March 1941.

The opening scene of Jacob's Room is set on a beach in Cornwall during a summer holiday in the 1890s. At the time Jacob Flanders is a boy giving his widowed mother a hard time like his elder brother Archer, while his younger brother John is only a baby. Jacob passes an ordinary childhood in the small northern town of Scarborough in Yorkshire and in 1906, at the age of eighteen, he moves on to Cambridge to begin his studies at Trinity College. Although he is clumsy, insolent and inexperienced, he soon adapts to student life and makes friends. With them he indulges in the usual activities: they go to mass in King’s College Chapel, they attend the Sunday luncheon parties of their don, they get absorbed in discussions of all kinds, they row boats on the river, they read and they study. Upon the invitation of his friend Timmy Durrant he makes a trip on a yacht during summer holidays. After a few days on sea and a little quarrel, they stop by the Durrant’s summer house in Harrogate and Jacob is a success with the party despite being perceived as somewhat awkward by his surroundings, but distinguished-looking. Timmy’s sister Clara is particularly impressed by the young man’s unworldliness and also Jacob admires her as a woman with a flawless mind and a candid nature. However, after graduation Jacob goes to London to prepare for the Bar and plunges into bustling life in the streets of the metropolis. For a while he has a love affair with a young woman called Florinda and later Fanny Elmer, who poses for a painter friend of Jacob, unsuccessfully tries to impress him by reading Tom Jones by Henry Fielding because she has a crush on him. Then in the spring of 1914 Jacob travels to Italy and Greece because he adores Ancient Roman and Greek culture. He passes peaceful and impressive days with Sandra Wentworth Williams and her husband Evan, not suspecting what lies ahead.

In Jacob's Room the author traces the life of the male protagonist in a remarkably indirect way using a series of disconnected scenes that revolve around him although he isn’t always present. His character is mostly depicted as others perceive it, notably the important women in his life like his mother, his lover and friends, and takes shape only as the novel progresses. The narrative technique chosen by the author for this purpose is stream-of-consciousness which includes many passages with a powerful and poetic imagery. Although the structure of the novel is strictly chronological, the timeline is fragmented. There isn’t much of a plot leading the reader by the hand through Jacob’s life, either. Written in a more conventional style, the novel would certainly feel rather dull and boring because all things considered its story is uneventful and commonplace. But luckily Virginia Woolf made an experimental character study of it, one that is much neglected by readers because it is less accessible than other works by the same author, above all Mrs. Delloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and her impressionistic masterpiece The Waves. This makes it a difficult read that requires quite some attention and a taste for jumping from one scene into the next almost without transition. The author’s language, however, is modern and unpretentious, thus pure delight.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Jacob's Room by Viriginia Woolf although I must admit that it isn’t my favourite among her works. The picture of Jacob that the pieces of the puzzle show in the end is a bit too incomplete to my taste, but the novel is certainly worth the time it requires to read it. Thus I recommend it.

Book Review: The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

A hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War we often wonder how the light and merry belle époque could lead the world into a barbaric carnage of unprecedented dimensions. Taking into account that propaganda was running wild at the time, it is difficult to say if people, above all military and bourgeoisie, really welcomed the war with as much patriotic fervour as is reported, but it seems that the atmosphere in the early twentieth century was very peculiar. In the realm of fiction one of the most succeeded and important depictions of life in the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy during the decades before its fall is The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth which I’m reviewing today. It’s the chronicle of three Barons Trotta von Sipolje, descendants of poor Slovenian farmers, whose lives are determined by their instilled devotion to Emperor Francis Joseph I and to Austria-Hungary. 

Joseph Roth, full name Moses Joseph Roth, was born in Lemberg (today: Lwow), Galicia, Austria-Hungary (today: Ukraine) in September 1894. Until the outbreak of World War I he studied philosophy, German philology and literature at the universities of Lemberg and Vienna. In 1915 his first novella Der Vorzugsschüler (The Honours Student), was published. While working in the news service of the Austro-Hungarian army from 1916 on, he began his career as a journalist and continued writing fiction. The most important literary works of the prolific writer are The Spider’s Web (Das Spinnennetz: 1923), Job: The Story of a Simple Man (Hiob. Roman eines einfachen Mannes: 1930) and above all The Radetzky March (Radetzkymarsch: 1932) as well as its sequel The Emperor’s Tomb (Kapuzinergruft: 1938). Following complications caused by chronic abuse of alcohol, which he dealt with in his novella The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker: 1939), Joseph Roth died in Paris, France, in May 1939. 

The main scene of The Radetzky March is Austria-Hungary in the early twentieth century through the first years of World War I although the chronicle actually begins in the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Inexperienced as the young Emperor Francis Joseph I is in war matters (he is not yet thirty), he lifts his field glasses before the enemy has fully withdrawn. Infantry Lieutenant Joseph Trotta knows the danger from snipers and dives at the Emperor to save him. His rewards are promotion to the rank of Captain, ennoblement to Baron Trotta von Sipolje… and a bullet in his collarbone. Inevitably life changes for the hero of Solferino who finds himself sort of uprooted because he no longer belongs to the class of ordinary soldiers and citizens, nor feels comfortable among aristocrats. Eventually, he marries and has a son, Franz, whom he sends to cadet school in Vienna as becomes his station. When he finds out that his act of heroism in the battle of Soferino is exaggerated in his son’s school books, he asks that facts are set right. After his audience with the Emperor he retires to his wife’s country estate where he takes to managing the farm and requires his son to promise him to never join the army. As is a good son’s duty, he obeys and successfully pursues a career as a lawyer in the civil service. Two years after the death of his father, Franz Baron Trotta of Sipolje is appointed District Administrator in W., a small town in Moravia. He marries and has a son, Carl Joseph, whom he sends away to cadet school in Vienna. Carl Joseph grows up in an atmosphere of strict routines both in school and at home. At the age of eighteen, he joins the cavalry as his father wishes because for the grandson of the hero of Solferino a military career is the only suitable choice. Carl Joseph feels out of place and he is bored like all his comrades, but he is quickly dragged into the typical life of a soldier in peacetime which involves streams of alcohol, gambling, duelling with pistols, visits to the brothel and passionate love. Serious trouble is predestined and behind the horizon war is looming. 

Life in The Radetzky March passes under the eyes of two great father figures who look down on all three Trottas from their canvases and determine their lives. One is the hero of Solferino who would much rather have remained an anonymous soldier in his Emperor’s army and the other is Emperor Francis Joseph I himself who rules multiethnic Austria-Hungary during sixty-eight years. Both idols are fixed stars in the universe of the Trotta family around which each generation revolves. Also the melody of the Radetzky March, which Johann Strauss Sr. composed in honour of the heroic Austrian Field Marshall Joseph Count Radetzky von Radetz (1766–1858) in 1848, thus the year of Francis Joseph’s accession to the throne, is a red thread running through the entire novel and like life in the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy it always goes on unchanged in the way of a haunting tune. The author’s focus is on Carl Joseph Baron Trotta von Sipolje whose story not just shows his tragic fate, but at the same time reflects in great detail social and military life in the early twentieth century. As always, the language in which Joseph Roth told his novel is a mere delight to read – it’s elegant, precise, poetic and powerful from beginning to end. If the English translation is only half so good, it’s still excellent. 

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth is one of my all-time favourite novels and I’m glad that an English translation is available. To my great satisfaction I found out recently that the late German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranitzky included it into his canon of the most important literary novels in German language, and quite on top of the list. I shouldn’t be surprised. Not without reason scores of German teachers have read it with their students since it first appeared in 1932. It certainly deserves the popularity and I join them with my recommendation.

The Great War in Literature Special

The Great War of 1914 to 1918, the First World War that was called so, covered our beautiful planet with blood and suffering. Millions of soldiers around the world, many of them scarcely prepared for battle, were sent into an inferno of dimensions beyond thought until then. Danger lurked everywhere: on the ground, in the air and even under water. Terror and fear filled the hearts of those who, by sheer luck, survived the slaughtering executed by faceless enemies serving soulless machines. It was a new kind of war that must have left many fighting men speechless because they couldn’t even think of appropriate words to express the horrible experience in its full extent. 

But there were others at the front, gifted writers whose minds could translate inhuman impressions into human language to share them with those off the battlefields and to maybe, just maybe inspire them to stand up for peace. Many of them were killed in action and thus prevented from revelling in their success. Many survived and only started to write after the war when there was time to sit down and put pen to paper in a peaceful and safe environment. Also those who stayed behind at home, above all women and children, wrote about hardships and sacrifices that war asked of them to tell the world that their life wasn’t a bed of roses, either. 

Is it much of a surprise that this first great war of the twentieth century had a huge impact on literature? Topics changed, but also language and style. In which ways? I decided to make a special to find out book after book! By the way, if you would like to suggest a read (one that doesn’t glorify war) – you’re welcome to leave a comment. 

And here's my list of novels which are – one way or another – related to the Great War of 1914-1918 (subject to change). Links are to my reviews: 

• Peregrine Acland: All Else Is Folly. A Tale of War and Passion (1929)
• Enid Bagnold: A Diary Without Dates (1917)
  - - -: The Happy Foreigner (1918)
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), translated into English as Journey to the End of the Night
• Jean Echenoz: 14 (2012), translated into English as 1914 
• Mark Helprin: A Soldier in the Great War (1991)
• Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1929)
• Henning Mankell: Djup (2004), translated into English as Depths
• Ian McEwan: Atonement (2001)
• Anaïs Nin: Lilith in: The Winter of Artifice (1939)
• Leo Perutz: Wohin rollst du Äpfelchen... (1928), translated into English as Little Apple
• Erich Maria Remarque: Im Westen nichts Neues (1929), translated into English as All Quiet on the Western Front 
• Joseph Roth: Radetzkymarsch (1932), translated into English as The Radetzky March  
• Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn: Август Четырнадцатого (1971), translated into English as August 1914
  - - -: Oктября Шестнадцатого (1985), translated into English as November 1916
  - - -: Март Семнадцатого (1989), not translated into English yet
  - - -: Aпрель Семнадцатого (1991), not translated into English yet
• Marcelle Tinayre: La Veillée des armes. Le départ; Août 1914 (1915), translated into English as To Arms! as well as previously as Sacrifice  
• Sylvia Townsend Warner: Mr. Fortune's Maggot (1927)
• Franz Werfel: Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933), translated into English as The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (the Great War is only the background of the story about the cruel banishment and slaughtering of Armenians in Turkey in 1915)
• Rebecca West: The Return of the Soldier (1918) 
• Edith Wharton: The Marne (1918)
  - - -: A Son at the Front (1923) 
• Virginia Woolf: Jacob's Room (1922)
  - - -: Mrs. Delloway (1925)