Birdsong: Summary and book reviews of Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, plus links to an excerpt from Birdsong and a biography of Sebastian Faulks.

Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for years to come.

Media Reviews

New Yorker - Simon Schama Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a prefect novel--just a great one.   The New York Times Book Review - Michael Gorra Birdsong seems to me superb. His prose is spare and precise.... Mr. Faulks's elaborate structure merely demonstrates how quickly innovation can be reduced to a formula. The present-day scenes in Birdsong are so lackluster that they seem a kind of injustice; I can scarcely believe they're the work of the same writer who in this book's best pages draws on Owen's great poem to provide a genuinely cathartic description of the war's last days.   Los Angeles Times Book Review - George Garrett Worthy in every way of its honors and success..The accounts of combat, ringing with credibility and authenticity, are among the finest that I have ever read.   Booklist - Gilbert Taylor As typical of the "lost generation" of Britain (where this novel was a best-seller), the Wraysford antihero realistically conveys what a waste--in lives and psyches--the trench experience was. A well-crafted glimpse into gloom.   Publishers Weekly Enlivened with considerable historical detail related through accomplished prose, his narrative flows with a pleasingly appropriate recklessness that brings his characters to dynamic life.   Daily Mail - Quentin Crewe An amazing book--among the most stirringly erotic I have read for years...I have read it and re-read it and can think of no other novel for many, many years that has so moved me or stimulated in me so much reflection on the human spirit.   Sunday Express - Andrew James This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again.   Mail on Sunday - Brian Masters One of the finest novels of the last 40 years.   Time Out - Nigel Watts This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one's life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it. Frank Conroy Birdsong moved me more profoundly than anything I've read in years.... A deeply compassionate, utterly thrilling work by a master of the form.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Hannah
hmmm...
I am studying this book at the moment and have turned to this website to gain other peoples opinions as I was very disappointed. When I started to read the book I was gripped by the character of Stephen and his relationship with Isabelle, but the...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Andy A
Awful book
A good few people have recommended this book to me over the years knowing that I have a great interest in WW1 & WW2. I am not normally one to read novels (I prefer historical text books) but after the book was recommended to me yet again I...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Emma Bambridge
The most emotional book I have ever read
Birdsong didn't appeal to me at first when I read the blurb. But as I started reading the first chapter I couldn't put it down! Stephen as the main character made my imagination come to life! I pictured everything that happened and felt the...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Karen
Great war story, weak love story
Not being a fan of war novels, I was a bit leery to start this book had it not been so highly recommended. While the accounts of the war were truly horrific beyond comprehension, it was written in such a way that what you actually see and feel as a...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Brigitte
Pointless and inappropriate
This book was the worst book I have every read. Though many classics have intimate romance, they at least have some meaning to them, this book, on the other hand, has no point at all to it's highly graphic and inappropriate sensuousness, no rich...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Emma McKay
One of the most moving books I have ever read..
People recommend books all the time - and in fact 'Birdsong' wasn't recommended to me, I fortunately just came across it - but a week after finishing the book the images and characters are so thoughtfully and dramatically developed that they remain...   Read More

...2 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
• Love Stories
  
• Europe 
  
• France 
  
• 20th Century (multiple decades) 
  
• In Time of War & The Effects of War