The Wars by Timothy Findley

[gincognito]

I can't find it right now, but I know there was mention of this book in a thread somewhere. In any case, my interest was rekindled so I went back and read it for a second time.

A finely wrought book. Beautifully told and chockful of melancholy and heartache. The War scenes are awful and the description of the battlefields have you in the mud with the young soldiers. And yet they are not over the top or pound-you-over-the-head-with-the-horror. They just are.

I admit, I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of the characters, but the tone more than made up for it. So many themes of Findley's work are apparent here. The photographs, the short sentences to form the images, the melodrama. The idea that we are all alive through each other. That no one really dies if we love and are loved. That the greatest gift we can give is to pass life along. Ironic from a gay writer, but no less the powerful.

Anyhow, well worth a read and shame on the schools that ban it due to two short homosexual scenes.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and still meaning to read Famous Last Words),
d.
--
"...letters - photos - telegrams...this is the last thing you see before you put on your overcoat: Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony - Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: 'Look! You can see our breath!' And you can."
-Timothy Findley, The Wars

[Eldo]

Damn, we had to read The Wars in high school and because of that I hated it. (However I don't recall any gay dwarf sex!?)

But I enjoyed Famous Last Words, and The Telling of Lies. (If memory serves me.) Farley Mowat's And No Birds Sang is also a good Canadiana war-ish novel.

[gincognito]

Damn, we had to read The Wars in high school and because of that I hated it.

Rereading high school books is an eye-opening experience. It's amazing how much more I enjoy these books when there isn't a timetable and book report attatched to them.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and perhaps being older helps too),
d.