WINNER OF WATERSTONES NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD A TOP FIVE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS DEBUT OF THE YEAR
'If you haven't read it, you're missing out' Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
'One of the best debuts I've read in recent years . . . please rush out and buy it' ELIZABETH DAY ______________________
In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him too.
When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him to the front. Ellwood and Gaunt find love in the trenches - but just as war brought them together, it can tear them apart…
An epic, unforgettable love story between two soldiers in the First World War, In Memoriam is a breath-taking debut. ______________________
'A genuine page-turner' Sunday Times
'BIRDSONG for a new generation' JOANNA QUINN, author of THE WHALEBONE THEATRE
'I can't remember the last time I was this invested in a love story' Sunday Telegraph
'Assured, affecting and moving' MAGGIE O'FARRELL, author of HAMNET
It's hard to believe that In Memoriam is a debut novel as it's so assured, affecting and moving. Alice Winn has written a devastating love story between two young men that moves from the sheltered idyll of their public school to the unspeakable horrors of the Western Front during the First World War. Gaunt and Ellwood will live in your mind long after you've closed the final pages. -- Maggie O'Farrell One of the best debuts I've read in recent years: immersive, rousing, tender and devastating. In Memoriam is both a deeply moving love story and a visceral evocation of the Great War, impressively free of cliche. Winn makes such important points about class, destruction and the loss of innocence. I loved it with a startling ferocity -- Elizabeth Day A tender, affecting debut . . . Winn strikingly evokes the torment and brutality of life of the front - The Times
A vivid rendering of love and frontline brutality in the first world war . . . In Memoriam is at once epic and intimate, humorous and profound, a vivid rendering of the madness and legacy of the first world war as seen through the lens of a schoolboy love affair . . . Acts of revenge, moonlit escapes from POW camps, serendipities just wild enough to be credible - all bound from the page with a clarity best described as cinematic, while even in the direst moments Winn's dialogue thrums with mirth and furious intelligence. Throughout, she artfully switches perspectives and settings, leaving the reader in desperate suspense over fates and fortunes. - Observer
