![]() ![]() ![]() Tough, principled Henry Gaunt is tucked away at boarding school in the English countryside, where he spends most of his time pretending he’s not desperately in love with his popular, poetry-mad best friend Sidney Ellwood, whom he has no idea is obsessed with him too. ![]() ![]() We begin a few months after war breaks out in 1914. I finished it with my heart thudding: Winn gives us arch, sparky dialogue, a white knuckle ride of a plot and the sort of characters you know will remain embedded in your psyche. Not bad for an unknown author who had almost ditched her dream of writing a book altogether after three unsuccessful previous novels.ĭubbed “ Birdsong for a new generation”, In Memoriam is both a startlingly tender love story that brings to mind Madeline Miller’s powerhouse The Song of Achilles, and a vivid, fiercely intelligent account of the senseless butchery of war. In Memoriam – a heart-wrenching story of the forbidden love that blooms between two young men in the trenches – has been hailed the debut of the year and soared straight into fourth place in The Sunday Times books charts when it was published last month, topped only by literary megastars like Margaret Atwood and Jojo Moyes. “I thought: ‘God, do we really need another World War One story about public school boys?’” says the 30-year-old. Before Alice Winn wrote her bestselling debut novel In Memoriam, she had a momentary wobble. ![]()
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