Frederic Manning (1882–1935)

I don't know if this is my kind of book, since I find war novels and memoirs unsettling, but the excerpts and chapters I read convinced me that Manning - a delicate, largely English figure who shared some familial relationship with Australia - wrote the fantastic WWI novel that many critics of the time felt this to be.

For me, the most affecting moment is when the narrator recalls a loss of spirit halfway through the deployment, once the men have seen real action, and realised that the Germans on the other side know as little about the complex politics and motivations of the war than they do. Wow.… (mere)

I found this book to be both monotonous and beautifully rendered at the same time.

Set in World War I, the book focuses on the lives of ordinary soldiers in the trenches, mostly as seen through the eyes of one particular soldier, Bourne. The first three quarters of the book focuses on the every day lives of the soldiers as they wait for something to actually happen. There's a lot of obtaining of rations and going out for drinks. In addition, some soldiers speak in an uneducated dialect that's hard to follow. And there are whole paragraphs in French. My high school French was partially up to the task of translation, but if I hadn't had that, I never would have known what was said. Not that it really mattered.

You can tell Manning focused on writing and teaching poetry. His writing itself is really evocative of time and place. I credit him highly for that. There are numerous exquisitely rendered sentences that make you go "oh wow". But the rest of what makes novels great seemed a bit missing.

He isn't big on building suspense. Honestly, until the last quarter of the book, I just felt like I couldn't keep going at times. Oddly paralleling some of the sentiments of the soldiers. But when I am reading for pleasure, this feeling really isn't a plus.

The ending (which I won't elaborate upon), when battle finally came, was very well done, and you almost felt like you were in the war yourself. That part was five star.

All in all, I just don't think this is a book I'd recommend anyone read for enjoyment. If you enjoy literature about war and the military, you may want to read it. I think it would be a great book to teach in a literature class even just to expose students to the writing itself. But it is a book I'm glad to have read, but was really sorry I was reading while I was reading it. And it's a book I just wouldn't go around recommending to regular readers; but if you were an English lit major or read and love fiction about war, this one may be for you.… (mere)

To a large extent, the popular British memory of the First World War is shaped by it's literature; the poems of [a:Wilfred Owen|4242|Wilfred Owen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1211230350p2/4242.jpg], plays, notably [b:Journey's End|19422141|Journey's End (York Notes)|R. C. Sherriff|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922333s/19422141.jpg|27499570] by [a:R. C. Sherriff|7190389|R. C. Sherriff|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], and memoirs cum novels by the likes of [a:Edmund Blunden|31139|Edmund Blunden|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1335026460p2/31139.jpg], [a:Robert Graves|3012988|Robert Graves|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1251049332p2/3012988.jpg], and [a:Richard Aldington|94230|Richard Aldington|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1301735220p2/94230.jpg].

While these are all valuable documents, written as they were by men who served, there is a danger that they present an unrepresentative picture of life in the British army on the Western Front. Blunden, Graves, and Aldington, as well as [a:Siegfried Sassoon|146538|Siegfried Sassoon|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1210181586p2/146538.jpg], were all privately educated university men at a time when very few Brits could say that. As a result, the picture of Britain's war that emerges from the literature is disproportionately posh.

In it's unbowlderised form, [b:The Middle Parts of Fortune|19292587|The Middle Parts of Fortune|Frederic Manning|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386524779s/19292587.jpg|366662] goes some way towards re balancing that. The hero is a slightly irritating semi toff who is presented as a bit of an ideal, but lots of space is given to the rank and file, characters like Shem, Martlow and Smart. With their grim humour and determination, these men, as much as their well educated officers, were the raw material of Britain's military success in the First World War. This book takes a closer look at them than any other and, as a result, is perhaps the most enlightening piece of British literature to emerge from the trenches.… (mere)