Published 1993 / Length 503 pages
Packed with period detail and enlivened by an erotically charged romance, Birdsong has already become one of the classic depictions of the First World War. Stephen Wraysford, a junior partner in a textiles firm, is sent to Amiens in 1910 to study production techniques. While there, he begins a passionate affair with Isabelle Azaire, the wife of his host, and they elope together. Six years later, Stephen returns to France as a lieutenant in the British Army. He enters the trenches at the Somme, where he endures the privations, military offensives and enemy counter-attacks that form part of everyday life there. In the trenches we also encounter Captain Michael Weir, Wraysford’s friend, and Jack Firebrace, a former miner employed to dig beneath enemy lines. Wraysford’s story is interspersed with that of his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, who experiences a similarly troubled romance, and Faulks draws parallels between the two pairs of lovers.
‘What stayed in my mind was the incredibly in-depth description of life in the trenches. Although I knew of the conditions, this is the first book that really brought home to me all the horror and filth of the trenches – the “reality” of the time.’ – LINDY, 40
• What do you think Faulks is trying to achieve with the character of Jack Firebrace? How does Firebrace’s experience of the war differ from Wraysford’s?
• Stephen Wraysford often seems emotionally detached from what happens around him. Is this a fair assessment? How is he affected by what he witnesses in the trenches?
• In what ways do the sections of the novel set in the 1970s add to the overall effect? How would the novel change if they were removed?
• Has reading this novel changed your perspective of the First World War? How does it differ from other depictions of wartime?
• Birdsong is the second volume in Faulks’s unofficial ‘French trilogy’; the first volume is The Girl at the Lion d’Or (1989), while Charlotte Gray (1998) completes the trilogy.
• Faulks wrote Birdsong in under six months, researching and writing it simultaneously.
• The book came thirteenth in the BBC’s ‘The Big Read’, a campaign to discover Britain’s most popular novels.
• Regeneration by PAT BARKER – another modern perspective on the First World War.
• All Quiet on the Western Front by ERICH MARIA REMARQUE – the trenches from a German soldier’s perspective; possibly the most famous novel of the First World War.
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES (see here) – love and loss in wartime.
• Jarhead by Anthony Swofford – this Gulf War memoir provides a comparison with modern warfare.