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beachy123's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
1.0
I really struggled with this book. But I was determined to get to the end. Firstly, the book is turgid and tedious. I am sure that life in the trenches was terrible but Blunden doesn’t really convey that terror. His narrative is disjointed and he just moves from one boring episode to the next. He never takes time to flesh out the characters he meets. The only saving grace for this edition are his poems at the end.
This book was not really for me!
This book was not really for me!
booksnpunks's review against another edition
3.0
Read for my third-year dissertation.
A good memoir, documenting Edmund Blunden's experience as a solider and poet during the First World War. It mentions a number of famous places such as Thiepval and Regina. One part of this I really liked was when he mentioned the name of the literature that helped me get through a very intense period inside the shelling.
For me to use academically, it focuses more on man's relationship with the landscape and what the war has done to the earth. Not applicable to my thesis, but interesting nonetheless.
A good memoir, documenting Edmund Blunden's experience as a solider and poet during the First World War. It mentions a number of famous places such as Thiepval and Regina. One part of this I really liked was when he mentioned the name of the literature that helped me get through a very intense period inside the shelling.
For me to use academically, it focuses more on man's relationship with the landscape and what the war has done to the earth. Not applicable to my thesis, but interesting nonetheless.
andrew_russell's review
1.0
One of the main issues with Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden is it's sheer tedium. I'll keep this review brief but there wasn't a lot that I took away from Blunden's work.
Essentially, it's a stuttering, disjointed, memoir of an officers time in the First World War. At times, there is barely enough time to read one sentence, before the narrative moves on to something else entirely. There are occasional passages in which Blunden waxes lyrical but this is always in relation to his environment and nearly always in relation to something that would be otherwise trivial. The characterisation is close to zero, the narrative is utterly unengaging and the ability of Blunden to allow you inside his head is again, almost non-existent.
Poetic passages cannot be effective if they are awash in a sea of otherwise weak prose, which very much felt the case with this work. It really shows that Blunden was relying on memory here - it's as though he has just jotted down some notes and flung them together in a hotch-potch fashion, with the odd eloquently written passage thrown in the mix. Blunden uses his poetic skill to it's fullest effect at times; the problem however is less to do with his prowess in describing for example, the sights and sounds of war, and an awful lot to do with his inability to convey how it felt to be there, part of which stems from the fact that the narrative threads just do not knit together coherently.
By all means give this a bash....it must be for someone but I can say categorically that it just didn't work at all for me.
Essentially, it's a stuttering, disjointed, memoir of an officers time in the First World War. At times, there is barely enough time to read one sentence, before the narrative moves on to something else entirely. There are occasional passages in which Blunden waxes lyrical but this is always in relation to his environment and nearly always in relation to something that would be otherwise trivial. The characterisation is close to zero, the narrative is utterly unengaging and the ability of Blunden to allow you inside his head is again, almost non-existent.
Poetic passages cannot be effective if they are awash in a sea of otherwise weak prose, which very much felt the case with this work. It really shows that Blunden was relying on memory here - it's as though he has just jotted down some notes and flung them together in a hotch-potch fashion, with the odd eloquently written passage thrown in the mix. Blunden uses his poetic skill to it's fullest effect at times; the problem however is less to do with his prowess in describing for example, the sights and sounds of war, and an awful lot to do with his inability to convey how it felt to be there, part of which stems from the fact that the narrative threads just do not knit together coherently.
By all means give this a bash....it must be for someone but I can say categorically that it just didn't work at all for me.