I've got that feeling right now, after just finishing Louisa Young's amazing story My Dear I Wanted To Tell You, about the First World War, and how it changed the lives of everybody touched by it, whether they fought in it or not.
It touches on the earliest days of modern plastic surgery too, which arose from some of the terrible injuries suffered by the soldiers in the trenches, who were fighting at a time when the mechanisation of war vastly outstripped that of the medical technology available to treat them.
I've just read an interview by the author, and this part of it really strikes me as an important insight, which I wanted to share:
"One of the characters in Young?s book seeks surgery out of pure vanity. Young tells me that she sympathises with this woman, but then the subject launches her into a magnificent rant. No Botox for Young then? ?I?ve got an agreement with friends and relations that if I ever suggest I will have cosmetic surgery, they will strap me down, take my money and send it to a cleft-palate charity. No way.
?The industrialisation of female vanity is shocking. Convince someone that they?ve got an enemy and they?ll pay you loads of money to get rid of it; that works for politics exactly the same way as it works for self- hatred. Now suddenly it?s pubic hair. It was fine until ten years ago, now it?s a multimillion-dollar industry telling women that they should have a weird do on their parts. Someone?s made a fortune out of that bright idea. If we all put the same amount of work into solving real problems rather than women?s appearance, the world would be transformed.?
Anyway, if you get the chance to read the book, please do; it was incredibly moving.