As a reader, I found it hard to comprehend exactly how or why the affair started, for Isabelle is a married woman, and it isn’t clear what the two lovers had in common. While the love between Isabelle and Stephen was compelling, it seemed to be solely based on physical attraction, and therefore it lacked some depth for me. For me, I tried to skim and skip as much of that as possible. Some of you might not be bothered by that. I would not have finished this book if not for my goal to read all of the books on the BBC list. It takes up the first portion of the novel, and while it is gripping and full of conflict, it was also graphic and explicit, in ways that I’m not quite sure how to describe. My biggest problem with the novel is also the biggest theme: the love affair between Isabelle and Stephen. However, other parts of the novel were completely unrealistic. Those are also heartrending, and I commend Faulks for giving a realistic and gritty portrayal of what warfare then was really like. This isn’t that hard to follow, unless you read a lot of professional communication theory in between reading it and you wait a week or so then it becomes a little tricky remembering who everybody is, especially in the scenes about WWI and the trenches. The narrative jumps between time periods.

work, and partly because the novel seemed to lag in certain places, and I had a hard time picking it back up again. It took me nearly a full semester to get through it, partly because I was busy with reading and writing for my Ph.D. I finally got through Birdsong (1993) by Sebastian Faulks and number 17 on the BBC book list.

Birdsong ww1