This is one of those books that I ended up seeing at the library and something about it just made me want to take it out. It's a historical novel about two romances during WWI, but it's the framing device that really makes the book work--the story of the lives of the two couples is told by Aphrodite to Hephaestus, after she's been caught by him having an affair with Ares. She tells the story aided by Ares, Apollo and Hades, and it is the four of them together who can construct the narrative, needing pieces of love, war, music and death.
One of the couples is made up of two young English people, a soldier and the pianist he meets shortly before being sent to the front. The other is a young Belgian woman whose entire family was killed by the Germans early on in the war, and a Black American soldier who is also a jazz musician. The story follows them through the year of 1918, and the sheer pointlessness of this particular war is just overwhelming. The book does a really lovely job of weaving together many different cultural threads, especially the experience of Black Americans in Europe, and how often they had more to fear from their white countrymen than even from the front. I hadn't know about Black regiments or how much of their labor fueled the entire American line, or how much it reflected the rise of Jim Crow all over the U.S.
I got very worried about fifty pages from the end, but this book isn't cruel; it is a love story that takes place during war, but it doesn't feel a need to punish the characters we have grown to care for simply because of it. I really enjoyed this book, and of course now have half a dozen new books I want to read as a result of it.
Grade: A
One of the couples is made up of two young English people, a soldier and the pianist he meets shortly before being sent to the front. The other is a young Belgian woman whose entire family was killed by the Germans early on in the war, and a Black American soldier who is also a jazz musician. The story follows them through the year of 1918, and the sheer pointlessness of this particular war is just overwhelming. The book does a really lovely job of weaving together many different cultural threads, especially the experience of Black Americans in Europe, and how often they had more to fear from their white countrymen than even from the front. I hadn't know about Black regiments or how much of their labor fueled the entire American line, or how much it reflected the rise of Jim Crow all over the U.S.
I got very worried about fifty pages from the end, but this book isn't cruel; it is a love story that takes place during war, but it doesn't feel a need to punish the characters we have grown to care for simply because of it. I really enjoyed this book, and of course now have half a dozen new books I want to read as a result of it.
Grade: A
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