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A gripping,heart-shattering love story between two soldiers in the First World War.
It's 1914,and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt,Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates,safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen,they're too young to enlist,and anyway,Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend,the dreamy,poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him,always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks,Gaunt signs up immediately,relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.
The front is horrific,of course,and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield,Ellwood soon rushes to join him,spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long,their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches,Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another,but their friends are all dying,right in front of them,and at any moment they could be next.
An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip,In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 2928377212827Number of pages: 400Weight: 514 gDimensions: 222 x 144 x 36 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'It's hard to believe that In Memoriam is a debut novel as it's so assured,affecting and moving. Alice Winn has written a devastating love story between two young men that moves from the sheltered idyll of their public school to the unspeakable horrors of the Western Front during the First World War. Gaunt and Ellwood will live in your mind long after you've closed the final pages.'- Maggie O'Farrell
'One of the best debuts I've read in recent years: immersive,rousing,tender and devastating. In Memoriam is both a deeply moving love story and a visceral evocation of the Great War,impressively free of cliche. Winn makes such important points about class,destruction and the loss of innocence. I loved it with a startling ferocity'- Elizabeth Day
'A tender,affecting debut...Winn strikingly evokes the torment and brutality of life of the front; - The Times
'Alice Winn's devastating debut will smash your heart to smithereens...as thousands of young men die in the most horrific of ways,Gaunt and Ellwood attempt to survive the slaughter and keep their love alive; - The Daily Mail
'Winn's accomplished debut presents two indelible characters - athletic Henry Gaunt and lyrical Sidney Ellwood,English boarding school chums who both believe their love for each other is unrequited. Whether they're posturing schoolboys on the cusp of World War I or enduring the visceral shock and horrifying randomness of death in the trenches,Gaunt and Ellwood are unceasingly drawn to each other,each afraid to risk following his heart until it may be too late.'- The Washington Post
'I read through the night to finish this blistering debut,too feverishly engrossed to sleep. When was the last time characters in a novel seemed so real to me,so cherishable,so alive Alice Winn has made familiar history fresh; no account of the First World War has made me feel so vividly its horror,or how irrevocably it mutilated the world. That In Memoriam is also an extraordinary love story is a sign of Winn's wild ambition and her prodigious gifts: this is a novel that claims both beauty and brutality,the whole range of human life.'- Garth Greenwell,author of Cleanness and What belongs to you
'Winn offers a fresh look at a subject many of us believe we know well. A tender story as much about love as it is about war.'- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
'Alice Winn has pulled off a remarkable feat in making these men and the horrors of the First World War come so viscerally alive. It was like looking at a black and white photograph which has been colourised,and suddenly you understand that these shadowy people from the past also dreamed and cried and breathed just as we do now. I was completely absorbed,moved,and transported.'- Claire Fuller,author of Unsettled ground
'In Memoriam magnificent-dazzling and wrenching,witty and wildly romantic,with echoes of Brideshead Revisited and Atonement. I loved it.'- Lev Grossman,author of The Magicians
Alice Winn
Alice Winn is an American writer of fiction and screenplays and the author of the 2023 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize-shortlisted In Memoriam.
Visit the Alice Winn author page
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