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Sarah Broadhurst's view...
The beginning of this trilogy deals with the sadness of returning home after the terrible effects of war and finding a totally different world, to adjusting to a son you don’t know, a wife greatly changed and a life difficult to pick up again. It’s an excellent portrait of the time, beautifully written, a lovely book.
Comparison: Sebastian Faulks, Andrew Greig, Simon Mawer.
Who is Sarah Broadhurst ? |
Synopsis
The Soldier's Return by Melvyn Bragg
When Sam Richardson returns in 1946 from the `Forgotten War` in Burma to Wigton in Cumbria, he finds little has changed, as far as his own limited prospects go, but in his absence his young family has altered immensely. His wife Ellen has found a sense of self worth in her war time jobs, and their six-year-old son Joe, accustomed to his mother`s undivided love, doesn`t welcome the father he barely remembers. And Sam finds the traumatic scenes of Burma have changed him too, making the confines of this working class Cumbrian town stifling. The result is a family in turmoil, which reaches breaking point when Sam resolves to emigrate to Australia. Based on Bragg`s own family, this taut, powerful novel sits firmly in the tradition of his hugely popular Cumbrian novels.
Reviews
'The first Great War came alive in Faulks's Birdsong; the second Great War comes very much alive in The Soldier's Return...wholly absorbing' - John Bayley, Evening Standard
'Sympathetic, touching, infinitely believable' - D.J.Taylor, Literary Review
'Utterly credible, utterly compelling, and very enjoyable' - Allan Massie, Scotsman
About the Author
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Melvyn Bragg's first novel, For Want of a Nail, was published in 1965 and since then his novels have included The Hired Man, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, Without a City Wall, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Credo, The Maid of Buttermere and The Soldier's Return, which was published to huge critical acclaim in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary Award. He has also written several works of non-fiction including Speak for England, an oral history of the twentieth century, Rich, a biography of Richard Burton and On Giants' Shoulders, a history of science based on his BBC radio series. He was born in 1939 and educated at Wigton's Nelson Tomlinson Shool and at Oxford where he read history. He is controller of Arts at LWT and President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in 1998 he was made a life peer. He lives in London and Cumbria.
Photograph © Mandy Farrar
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Book Info
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Categories
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Categories
Literary / Contemporary
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