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Jump to navigationJump to searchThe Sins of Soldiers by S J Hardman Lea (view source)
Revision as of 17:51, 24 February 2017
, 17:51, 24 February 2017no edit summary
When the author looked at contemporary wartime photos, he wondered why the soldiers often seemed to be smiling in the face of such horrific adversity. After some thought and reading he came to the conclusion that all emotions (across both the happy and depressed ends of the spectrum) become heightened during warfare. With that in mind, he set forth to write this, the first of his ''Lost Intensities'' series. (The series title itself coming from a 1916 poem by Edmund Blunden, soldier poet and friend of Siegfried Sassoon.)
A novel exploring intensity of emotion in tandem with combat would only work in the hands of a good writer as these feelings would need to complement the action rather than engulf or cheapen it. No worries there though: Simon not only presents us with these characters' journey, the multi-layers work well together, meaning we're on it them every inch of the way.
This is also a book that opens our imaginations to the sensory experiences we may have only taken in intellectually before. For instance he describes the smell of the trenches: a concoction I'd never read about before of human waste from all orifices (to be delicate!), BO, mud, blood and the scent of fear. Now he's mentioned it, it makes sense and turns the volume up when we consider the discomfort that added to the enemy's onslaught.
Also I'd never considered the effects of living with enmity from within the British trenches. Anson is an outsider who isn't one of the officer establishment and yet hasn't shared life experiences to be embraced or understood by the enlisted men. If we add to this the company's own sadist, the story becomes totally unpredictable, making it completely enthralling.
I have no idea where her thoughts will take us, although I'm guessing there will be some incredibly authentic battle field medicine ahead. The reason? As a day job, Simon is a consultant surgeon which will come as a surprise to many: he seems to be as much a born writer as he is eminent ophthalmologist.
Further Reading: If you'd like to read more about the poet that inspired this series' title, we recommend [[Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War by Harry Ricketts]]. If you'd like more background to great battle of the Somme, there's [[24 Hours at the Somme by Robert Kershaw]]. If you prefer to stay with fiction, we recommend the haunting [[Her Privates We by Frederic Manning]].
