A Masterpiece

I was forced to read this book for English Literature A Level 30 + years ago and hated it. I was however, 17 and had little life experience. Unlike the young Vera Brittain, who is put in a situation of sink or swim. She chose to swim. I was as an A level student not particularly interest in the pain and suffering of others. Now, as I have lived my own life and worked as a Nurse for many years, this book came to life for me.

The book starts before the outbreak of the Great War and explores women's - 'not quite equal' relationship to men. Remember though, that Brittain is from an upper class family and would not experience the oppression of that of a working class woman. On the contrary, she is relativity privileged. Even so, she eloquently objects to her father 'why can't she go to Oxford when her brother is allowed'.

Later the book tells of her romance with a friend of her brothers, whom she falls madly in love with, but who is sent off to war as it starts. She joins the Nursing team of the Volunteer nursing core and from hear we enter into a story of repeated heartbreak as VB looses her lover, her brother and her closest friend.

So, this time round, I loved and devoured this book with the wisdom I did not hold at 17. lest we forget the great war and the human sacrifice. The book is beautifully narrated and is full of insightful notes of wisdom and philosophy that can only come about through the experience of pain.

I give it a 5 * recommendation as I have been deeply touched by this prose.

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7 people found this helpful

Powerful

First read this 40 years ago and re-reading just as powerful - and in new ways. Prescient, timeless and rich with humour, as well as tragedy.

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Important and unforgettable- make peace not war

A reminder why we need peace and not war. Vera Britten’s story is movingly told and so important to remember more than 100 years later.

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An amazing piece of literature

Without doubt this is an incredible piece of work and gives a very interesting view of a specific woman’s experience, before, during and after the 1st World War

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Powerful and effecting memoir.

Powerful and effecting memoir, a timely feminist read.

My mum has been persuading me to read this for at least twenty years. For some reason, I never did. I knew the story, and saw the recent film last year, and decided it was time, with the commemorations for the 100 years since the end of the First World War, to pick this up.

Though I decided that the style of this would suit an audio-read, and downloaded the Audible (24 hour) version. Though this did take me nearly a fortnight to listen to, I was engrossed in the early 1900s world of Brittain's youth.

It's just heart-breaking, listening to Vera as a mature adult look back at the world of 1914, at her own diaries, letters and poems from the time the world changed forever.

Knowing what was going to happen, it didn't lessen the pain I felt for Vera as each death occurs, seeing her continue to live, seeing her as typifying the experience of so many others.

Testament of Youth takes us from Vera's middle class adolescence as she grew up amidst the years of Women's Suffrage and struggled to earn a place at Oxford to the years of the War and beyond.

The experiences are so vivid, Vera's time nursing, with honest appraisals of the systems, people and behaviours. Quite eye-opening, seeing as Florence Nightingale had revolutionised nursing not too long before.

I cried a few times, there are such moving letters between brother and sister, an incredible relationship kept up even in a war. And I really felt for the young Vera and the naïve outlook that her older counterpart looks back on with a world-weary air. This is very-well conveyed as an audiobook with the narrator giving the Vera of 1914-18 a different voice and air to that of the older woman. The style of writing suits an audiobook perfectly as well, as the writer is addressing her reader directly making it very easy to follow aurally.

Enjoyed the 'post' war parts slightly less than Vera's WWI experiences, but I did like seeing her views on the suffrage movement and how women's rights and treatment in society altered after 1918.

A very important book, written for the ages, will not fail to impress itself upon you.

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1 person found this helpful

Voice of a generation

This was wonderful. I fully understand why this is thought to demonstrate the variety of experiences of the young people in WWI. Britain’s story is unique, but the scale of change and personal trauma she live through is not. The first 2 thirds of the book are particularly compelling accounts of trying to coordinate leave with loved ones and the superstitions that crept into everyday life. The final third deals with life after the war, which initially I was less interested in. I’m glad to have read it though as it covers a period most media ignores - the anguish of finding a new normal; learning that the war time children didn’t understand what their seniors had gone through; ultimately coming to accept that life was worth pursing despite devastating personal loses.

The style of writing is very much of its time and combined with the heavy topics and long chapters it can be a bit of a slog in places. I chose to listen to this on and off over the course of a couple of months.

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Emotion recollected in perspicacity

This is a life-changing book about a changed life.

The expert narration of Sheila Mitchell brings the vivid and brilliant mind of Vera Brittain into the sharpest mental focus, and this voice from a dead past speaks the words of the dead into present that needs - perhaps, sadly, will always need - to hear the lessons of history. Her near future failed to heed them; I fear the voices of the Great War through which she lived and suffered are needed as much as those of the subsequent conflict that Brittain's commitment to internationalism could not prevent. From out of those two disasters we have built, in the west at least, structures that have prevented, for the most part, the return of those conflicts for a period that has extended long beyond Vera Brittain's own life yet to which now we seem bent on turning our backs.

Vera Brittain's emotional and intellectual acuity and conviction has steeled my own resolve to be on the side of the right, even if I fear I may not be in the right side of history.

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1 person found this helpful

Memoir as riveting as any historical novel

Enjoyed this memoir very much for both it's intimate personal perspective and historical commentary. I found the readers clipped British accent difficult for my American ear.

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1 person found this helpful

a moving insight to living through immense tragedy

learning how to forgive yourself for surviving, whilst accepting that life and love moves on

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2 people found this helpful

Beautiful and deeply touching

Beautifully read, deeply touching I have listened to this many times, least we not forget what they all went through.

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1 person found this helpful