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I highly recommend it to readers interested in personal accounts of the war, those intrigued by late Victorian and Edwardian middle class life, and students of early 20th century feminism. The work is engaging and honest, and with her use of her own diaries, Brittain has remained as true as possible to how she felt when the events were actually happening. This is one of the best non fiction books I've ever read. I am fascinated by what led up to World War I and the events during and the minutae surrounding it. Like Robert Graves' fantastic Goodbye to All That, Vera Brittain's work speaks for her generation, for her class, and for her sex.
I never forgot her observation at the end of the book as she watched the deplorable treatment of the German people, seeing the seeds of the next war being sown. I am still haunted by her heartbreaking account of the beaten, broken young men in the muddy trenches as they watched the Americans arriving to come to their aid. The memory brings me to tears to this day. There's not much more to say than has already been written, but I just want to add that I got this book from the library sometime in the 1970's and I have never forgotten it. I am overjoyed to have found this wondrous book after all these years. Her entire generation went to war; I hardly knew anyone who did. As a member of the Vietnam generation I couldn't help comparing her experiences to mine. The young men of my age were in college for the most part and, therefore, exempt from the draft.
Her prose is extremely demanding and not for the faint of heart. Testament of Youth shines when Vera is discussing her personal relationships and frailties. She belonged to the middle/upper class, with all the comforts that status implies, even to the point of having no idea how to boil an egg at the age of 20. I have never been so aware of just how debilitating this era in history was, not just to the soldiers, but to those who waited, worked and worried back at home. Vera Brittain was a privileged, yet restricted young woman.
The book runs out of steam after the War, and then Vera's finalization of her education at Oxford. She had no idea just how it would transform the world and her life. I didn't find her discussion of her work for the League of Nations Union nearly as interesting as the previous 450 pages, though I might have done if I'd known more about British political history. It is at these moments that the book grabbed me by the shoulders and absolutely refused to let me go. There were many sections where I was only able to pick up just what she was saying from the context. At first I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to rise to the occasion, but in the end I was richly rewarded.
She was very of her time in that she had to fight for everything that today's women tend to take for granted. Five years later, she was a bitter, nightmare-ridden shadow of her former self. The meat of Testament of Youth is Vera's writing of her wartime experiences as a nurse and as a worried sister, lover and friend of those serving in the trenches. The freedom to spend time with whomever she chose, to have privacy, even to receive an education, were all hard-fought. Her vocabulary is dense and elaborate. Making copious use of her own diaries, letters between herself and her friends, and the poetry and music of the time, she gives a lesson by means of immersion into her life.
She freely admits that when the War broke out, it appeared to her to be an interruption and an inconvenience. Testament of Youth takes you from the time of Vera's childhood through 1925, when she is just starting a new, happier life.
The prose of the book's first half is unmatched in its beauty, and quotable passages abound throughout. If that were not off-putting enough, Brittain's constant hash and rehash of certain emotions, memories and details often make for some tedious and repetitive reading. Readers do not even have the pleasure of learning his name. To summarize the excess, there exists no satisfying end to this dark and heavy read.
This book, as captivating as it can be for the first 450 pages, is by no means an easy read. I was surprised at how often I empathized with Brittain's thoughts and feelings on several different subjects despite living almost a century removed from her time. Instead, the last quarter of the book devotes itself Brittain's political work for the newly-formed League of Nations--information that only readers with Ph.D.-level knowledge of British politics circa 1920 could find interesting and meaningful.However, in spite of these shortcomings, Testament of Youth remains a relevant, provoking, and well-written tome. For starters, Brittain employs a vocabulary that Shakespeare would have envied.
Readers will learn at this point in the book that Brittain becomes engaged to a mysterious man, only to burn in vain with curiosity over his identity; as effusive as Brittain is regarding her earlier loves, she remains stubbornly cryptic about her final husband-to-be. For me, the experience was definitely an enriching one, even though the reading often fell short of stimulating. I own two SAT- and beyond-level vocabulary books that I peruse on a regular basis, and I still encountered words I had never seen before (and have yet to see again) on nearly every page of Brittain's work. The main story actually ends somewhere around page 450, though most readers would not surmise that from the 150 additional pages padding the rear cover.
I just couldn't finish the book, certainly not ANOTHER 300-plus pages, that's for sure. I probably better just shut up. Was he really heterosexual, or.
And I should admit that I "only" read 386 pp before finally giving up. The language was simply too flowery, ornate and dated to hold my interest (it was a great book to fall asleep over); and the so-called "love story" element was just a little too unbelievable in its chasteness and altruism. I tried hard to like this book, but finally I just couldn't manage to.
In fact I seriously wondered about the fiance's sexual leanings. I gave it the old "college try," but I'm giving it back to the women and the historians. I am an avid reader of both memoirs and history fm the world wars, but I'm 64 years old and life is far too short and filled with too many really enjoyable books for me to continue slogging through this dreary tome.
While I know that Testament is an important text in the history of both feminism and the WWI era, I found the book to be incredibly slow and "overly romantic" in tone.
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