Lucy Beresford
Battlefields of Life
We That Are Left
By Clare Clark
Harvill Secker 450pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
The Iron Necklace
By Giles Waterfield
Allen & Unwin 435pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
The First World War has been the subject of countless books over the years, and no more so than now, during the ongoing centenary commemorations. Two new and rather similar sweeping novels explore the ripples and ruptures to society brought about by the trauma of four years of fighting.
Clare Clark’s focus, as the title of her carefully plotted We That Are Left implies, is mainly on those who never fought – because they were too young, too old or female – but who were still affected by the battles across the Channel. Some of her characters seize on the opportunities available to their sex or class, while others remain unsure whether to embrace this new world or wait patiently for the old one to rock gently back onto its axis.
It’s an old conceit, but one Clark injects with some degree of novelty by having the status quo represented not by a person but by Ellinghurst, the Melville family’s estate in the New Forest. Sir Aubrey wants to save it for future generations; cousin Evelyn can’t wait to sell it
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Sign up to our newsletter! Get free articles, selections from the archive, subscription offers and competitions delivered straight to your inbox.
http://ow.ly/zZcW50JfgN5
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete