A book MK should read to inspire a song

[je suis desole]

I finished Birdsong. Faulks does a good job of invoking the historical period. It is a powerful novel although the ending is a touch saccharine for my taste. However, I’ve just finished Anthony Beevor’s editing of Vassily Grossman’s WWII notebooks “Writer at War”, where even the victory celebrations end in death. Grossman was a war correspondent for the Red Army’s official paper, but somehow he managed to keep notebooks full of observations about the war that never made it into the newspaper. Beevor has done a fairly good job of putting a series of sometimes disjointed observations and vignettes into context, adding historical details and sometimes comparing the notes to what was later published.

[draad]

T - glad you enjoyed Birdsong.

I think I agree with you about the ending - but a v minor criticism of one of the best British novels in years.

Interesting the Beevor bit. A few months ago I won a signed collection of his called The Antony Beevor Collection (strangely enough!) . Four books - Paris, after the liberation 1944-1949: Crete, the battle and the resistance:Stalingrad : and Berlin, the downfall. All hardback and in a beautiful box. Ashamed to say I haven't started to read them as yet.

[je suis desole]

Aaaah, lucky man. I've read the 2 Soviet focused books. Many of the important revelations from Grossman’s notes made it into those two. But it is still nice having something closer to Grossman’s original notes available.

One great and tragic irony that emerges is that Grossman wrote a novel about the war, 'Life and Fate', in which the hero dies. The hero was named after a real officer, who Grossman admired at the time of writing the novel (around 1943), but who actually survived the war and went on to suppress the Hungarian revolt in 1956. 'Between a rock and a hard place' doesn’t even begin to convey the reality. Grossman himself narrowly escaped arrest and execution just before Stalin’s death.

[je suis desole]

Apparently I'm not the only one who enjoyed 'A Writer at War'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/29/best-books-year-2008-review
Scroll down to Richard Ford's recommendations
 

[IrisRose]

Richard Ford is hard for me to read. . . .  What happens?

[draad]

T - in the nicest possible way, you're scarily into books!!