Affecting, incisive, brittle, worthwhile

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	• Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 (Penguin ... Vera Brittain Penguin Classics, 1994 - 672 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

You will never forget.

An excellent and an amazing account of one womans life during the period of WW1. To read a womans story during this period I have found rare. Vera is a strong character, a feminist, born ahead of her time. I liked her enormously, I wish I could of met her.

Anyone who is interested in WW1 should read this. If I had even half of Vera Brittains strength of character, I should be very well pleased!!

I am only sorry that I cannot express my feelings on this book as well as she has written her own biography.

My life will not be the same again.

A MUST read!!

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just great

As I have set myself the topic "War in English literature" for my final examination you can imagine that I have to read quite a lot of books dealing with warfare. So far, this is undeniably the best. Brittain's book really is a testament to future generations about the "Great War". The content is far too diverse to summarize in a few sentences; let us just say that Brittain managed to capture the spirit of a whole generation.

I might add that I think that World War One is the perfect showcase of a futile conflict. Those dealing with world war literature would do well not just to read the literature of one side. For the American reader I can recommend Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" or (less known) Kraus' "The last days of mankind."

In fact, many of these authors (and also many of the war poets) voice the sentiment that the real enemy wasn't the soldier in the opposite trench - it was one's own general staff.

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World War I from a female perspective

Vera Brittain's work remains an important document in history, because it's one of the most well-known personal accounts of the First World War by a woman. Her "testimony" is moving, direct, and informed by an urgency which makes up for her sometimes florid prose. Brittain's account highlights the difficult position in which young British women found themselves during the War, caught between the desire to do something significant towards the war effort and cultural and social expectations of women's proper roles. More than anything else, Brittain's work is an eloquent testimony to the rage she and many young women like her felt towards the war and the society which it engendered it.

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Affecting, incisive, brittle, worthwhile

Ms. Brittain's autobio about the devastating losses she, and her generation, suffered as a result of WW I is simply brilliant. The book is clear, easy reading, and the story, though quite harsh, is never too filled with "woe is me" sentiment. Ms. Brittain's movement from provincial comfort to "university" to working as a volunteer VAD in the hospitals, coupled with the loss of a brother, a love, and a fiance, makes for fascinating reading. Ms. Brittain mourns the passing of the youth of the "war generation", but by the time the book is done, one realizes that the non-combatant "survivors" of Ms. Brittain's own generation--of literary "sets" and chivalric valour betrayed and changes in the social order in deep ferment-- has also passed from among us. This is not a joyful book, and its narrative voice can be quite bitter. But it is a meaningful book, and a very good read. Ms. Brittain's pragmatic feminism resonates well some seventy odd years later.

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A great book

This book was the subject of a PBS drama in he early 1980's. However as good as that BBC television play was the book itself is far and away a better experience. If you are interested in the "Great War" and it's effect on the battlefield and Western culture then this is a must read. Vera Brittain was born into a upper middle class British family, exactly the generation that so willing risked their lives for their Country, King and Empire. The effect upon her, her family and friends as well as her generation is overwhelming and gaves a human face to the great events of this last century. You will not be able to read this without feeling the overpowering effect that the Great War had on those both at the Western Front and at home. A great and often overlooked book, one of the few of it's type written by a woman, a real hidden classic.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7

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