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It’s also not just a straight war book. How do I put this without spoiling it….there are some mysteries, some red herrings, some tantalising secrets that will keep you hooked and wanting more. For me, it was a very claustrophobic story, you don’t feel relaxed until you reach the end, you get this constant idea that someone’s watching you, that you’re being suffocated. On the battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Atmospheric and meticulously researched, Two Storm Wood sheds light on the horrors and the trauma that continued even after the Armistice. It is that most wonderful of creations-a novel that informs while keeping you on the edge of your seat." - Abir Mukherjee
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was a standout novel in my teenage reading and beyond the need for English Literature set exams I have always been drawn to the poets from Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon. Insightful first hand accounts like Robert Graves’ “Goodbye to All That.” One of the most evocative thrillers I've ever read. The writing is superb - shades of Hollinghurst and Pat Barker combine in a taut, finely plotted mystery. The battlefield is almost a character in itself, and the presence of its dead disturbed me throughout. Be warned - this dark, intelligent story is very hard to put down. Haunting, cinematic, and utterly gripping' - D.B. John, author of Star of the NorthSure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have. The world has been waiting for a worthy successor to Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong - now Philip Gray has delivered it' David Young, author of Stasi Child . Three months after the end of the Great War, a young woman sets out across the wastelands of the Western Front to learn the fate of the man she loved.
A war story, a thriller, a love story and a critical look at the British class system and the pain and havoc it wrought at the time - all expertly woven into a terrific novel. This is a brutally unflinching account of war, from a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. I admire the actions of wanting relatives to have a body to mourn, even if they couldn’t be returned home. Looking at all the hard work and effort that goes into the maintenance of war graves today, makes you feel that they were honoured in death, whilst being treated so harshly in war. Normal?’ Westwood repeated the word as if it were unfamiliar to him. ‘I suppose if it were normal, I wouldn’t have been sent here.’For some unknown reason, I don’t normally gravitate towards WW1 books when I’m reading, but that may change after reading this one. It was the perfect blend of thriller and historical fiction that had me on the edge of my seat more than once while reading it. The story employs a non-linear plot that alternates sequences in the trenches in 1918 and the bulk of the story, set in 1919. I love non-linear plotlines. I think they are particularly effective for mysteries because it allows the reader to learn the story’s details bit by bit and gradually connect them to the main plot. It was satisfying in this case because the ‘truth’ the main plot uncovered changed many times, and the vision into the past gradually allowed me to make up my own mind about what happened. The haunting way in which this is described meant I could actually feel the eyes of the dead on me while reading, and that takes a lot for me to feel something like that, and you know it’s a great book when this happens. Hellfire, this is seriously good! It is well researched, with accurate descriptions , not only of the horrors of trench warfare, but very sympathetic to the family members left in limbo, where are their loved ones? If reported missing, that doesn’t give closure, if dead, where has the body been buried, was there enough body to identify, is there a marked grave or was it left to rot on the battlefield. Yes, I know that further revisions happenes. Another ARC I read had its ending revised before publication. I learned it from the author herself.
Don’t you understand? Amy said. ‘All this tolerance, this keeping up appearances. Like it’s all a game. Where’s the outrage? Can’t you feel it anymore?’ Immersive and eerily atmospheric, Gray’s novel delivers vivid historic detail and gripping suspense, aligning more closely with Dan Simmons’s Drood(2009) and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollowthan to most WWI thrillers. Two Storm Wood follows the stories of three British people whose lives have been affected by war in very different ways: a young woman who boldly sets out to find out what happened to her fiancé, who went missing in action; a soldier tasked with co-ordinating the retrieval of the dead; and a detective sent to investigate what appears to be a series of murders in the empty, devastated landscape. Westbrook sighed. ‘In the face of extreme violence, men either become resolute or they submit. They muster their dread – feed on it – or it breaks them. Moral outrage is quite useless, I’m afraid.’I can’t say whether Two Storm Wood really existed, but I do know that Chinese labourers were indeed emplyed in the trenches. This was a fascinating book which I found gripping, and difficult to step away from. The utter bleakness of the battlefields is painted in shades of unrelenting brown and grey, and the mud almost becomes another character in the book. The unravelling of the mystery is not a sudden reveal, but a gradual discovery like the identification of a decayed body. It is a book that communicates even more on a re-read as the knowledge of the conclusion gives more weight to seemingly throwaway sentences. I think this is a book that would be of interest to thriller readers and those interested in the First World War, but would also appeal to a wider audience. The horror elements of the book were amazing, the feeling of being watched by the millions of dead on the battlefields was always with you, as the mystery of the story unfolded. I found myself picturing how I would act and be there, in those situations, and truly I could never picture the 40 year old me doing what Amy does. Creative Writing My writer’s journey and lots of resources to share. My idea bout how to build a story, how to read it, how to savour it, and what to ask off of it
The veterans are all great characters. The author is visibly interested in the damaging power of the experience of war. All his characters are damaged in one way or another. Some of them are clearly irreparably so, but for others, there is hope, and this too – I think – is historically accurate. All are so realistically built that I deeply cared about all of them, even the more ambiguous. Their humanity was what came through, their personal experiences creating compassion that didn’t disappear even in the face of the most gruesome revelations. Beautifully and elegantly written, impeccably researched, full of facts and details about the Great War, a love story and a detective mystery all mixed up in one intoxicating brew. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.
Amy turned away again. ‘The things I’ve seen… they’re unforgivable. Who could live with the guilt?’ But I should say a bit more that that just to be honest. Philip Gray has written a novel about WW1 , and it’s aftermath, it’s effects on soldiers and those who love them that once read will linger in the reader’s memory. So a bit about the novel, without any spoilers so as not to ruin the pleasure of discovering a completely satisfying novel. I too read an ARC. I never thought about the ending possibly being changed. I just thought it was a little abrupt.
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