WW1/WW2 fiction novel recommendations?

29 replies

Zebraa · 03/01/2009 18:49

Can anyone recommend a really good book based around ww1 or ww2, preferably a love story involved? Something quite well written...

Just been to see The Reader and LOVED it but wish I'd read it first!

OP posts:

tigermoth · 03/01/2009 19:00

Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks set mainly during WW2 is a love story and a whole lot more - I found it a brilliant, but quite harrowing read - the sort of book that stays in your thoughts for a long time afterwards.

Birdsong, also by the same author, is set in WW1 but has less of a love story element though another great read - I'd definitely recommend it. This and Charlotte Gray form part of a triology set mainly in France during the war years.

If you look in the book review section, you will see more about them.

slayerette · 03/01/2009 18:53

Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong is a bit of an obvious one.

Pat Barker's WWI trilogy (starting with Regeneration) is brilliant.

Owen Sheers' Resistance is unusual - a story set in an alternate past where Germany managed to invade mainland Britain.

All Quiet on the Western Front gives a German perspective.

Not all love stories though!

I recently re-read Kate Seredy's The Good Master and The Singing Tree - children's books but the latter is one of the most moving descriptions of the effect of the war on the family at home I've ever read. It makes me cry every time.

janeite · 03/01/2009 18:50

Or is it "called Alice" - my mind is mixing up Neville Shute and The Jam I think!

janeite · 03/01/2009 18:50

A Town Like Alice

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