"My Dear, I wanted to tell you" by Louisa Young.

Readers of the Giffordtown Reading Group approached this book with some reluctance: so many books they’d read had been based on the theme of the WW1. However, once past the overly lush, adjective-strewn start of the story, most found themselves drawn in.

Classed as an historical novel, it’s a complex panoramic view of the effects of war that extends well beyond the battlefields. As has been well documented, life in Britain was never the same afterwards. Class structure, the place of women in the workplace and society, relations between men and women, medical knowledge and practices – all underwent a seismic shift.

Riley Purefoy is a lad from a working class background, taken up by a Bohemian family, who help develop not only his artistic skills, but also an awareness of the finer things in life. But his gradual rapprochement to the daughter of the house, Nadine, causes her family to start circling the wagons to dissuade a lasting relationship between the two. Then WW 1 intervenes and Purefoy joins up.

The scenes at the battle-front are all too realistic, but especially effective is the description of the soldiers, their camaraderie, mutual interest and inter-dependence extending from squaddies up to the commanding officer, in this case Peter Locke, a complex character on whose shoulders responsibility rests heavily.

Locke hales from the upper echelons of the gentry and his relationship to his wife, Julia, bred to be beautiful and useless, is contrasted with that of Purefoy and the Nadine. A foil to both couples is Locke’s sister, Rose, unencumbered by beauty, but blessed with common sense and a strong work ethic.

Invalided from the battlefield, Purefoy undergoes what were the early attempts at facial reconstruction. This part reveals the extent of the writer’s research, with the method used by New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies at Sidcup explained in wincing detail. (Sketches by surgeon/artist Henry Henry Tonks to help him can still be accessed.) The struggle to bring back patients after life-changing injuries is also sympathetically recorded.

Of course, the story relies a great deal on co-incidences that stretch the imagination. Does that matter? Probably not. But the worst set of co-incidences was in the ending, which turned onto a Brian Rix farce. This rather “pat’ conclusion, as one reader described it, was probably a result of the writer leaving the way opening to the second part of became a trilogy. It will be interesting to see how many readers make it through the next two books.

Next month’s book is a veritable tome; however, according to the views of two readers of the group who have read it before, it should be well worth the effort. Find out next month what readers think of “The American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfield.

Monique Sanders.