![]() ![]() Winn’s battle scenes are hair-raising and terrifying, but her portraits of Sidney and Henry are intimate and evocative. Neither of them are yet 19, the youngest age England accepts its soldiers. Sidney, obsessed with Tennyson's empire-loving verse and enamored with Henry’s bravery, also signs up. ![]() To prove their British bonafides and to compensate for the accusation that his uncle is a German traitor, Henry’s family encourages him to enlist. Sidney and Henry love one another but, perhaps understandably, have little ability to assess each other’s feelings, much less possess any insight about how to express their love. Winn lovingly re-creates British boarding school life during this era, the camaraderie among the boys but also the snarling viciousness of the place. Sidney is Jewish but thoroughly denies it Henry, or Heinrich, has lived in England for most of his life but is half German, a dangerous fact as the war begins. Between them, they harbor enough secrets to propel the plots of several books, and one of the wonderful aspects of Winn’s debut is that, just when you think you’ve settled into a tender literary novel, its revelations and surprises begin to unfurl at an impressive pace that reads more like a thriller. The two moneyed teens, Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt, are boarding school students in England just before the Great War begins. Love between two young men is tough enough in 1914 the fact that they are both fighting in World War I makes it…tougher. ![]()
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