Book Review: In Memoriam

In Memoriam
by Alice Winn
Review by Alex A

Tender and devastating, blackly funny, completely gripping. Despite its heart-wrenching subject matter, I adored this book. Winn’s writing is warm and sure-footed, never lingering over tragedy or straying into schmaltz.

Henry Gaunt and poetic, charming Sidney Ellwood attend a prestigious British boarding school during the early years of the First World War. Despite being only 17, they both enlist and are sent to the front, where they find desperate, youthful first love, hard-won camaraderie, and relentless, senseless violence.
Life in the trenches is rendered with brutal strokes – dismembered body parts, drunkenness and shellshock abound. The tension of this utterly bleak backdrop is offset by the fierce love between Gaunt and Ellwood, and the deep affection they have for their school cohort – almost all of whom are fighting alongside them.

This novel is an ode to queer love, a gripping war story, a treatise on the necessity of poetry and language for the human spirit. I devoured it in one sitting and have since read it again, somehow enjoying it even more the second time.

Perfect for readers of The Song of Achilles or Brideshead Revisited.