He spoke of being sent a photograph of a Rosslyn Park rugby team from 1913, every one of whose 15 members was killed. The nature of the war meant that its effects were appallingly concentrated. Faulks did not think his novel was a national story, but that the history it reimagined was "part of who we are". Birdsong makes room for a peculiar scene in which Stephen's friend and fellow officer, Weir, on home leave, begins to tell his father the truth about the front and meets with complete, almost hostile, indifference.Īn American member of the audience wondered what the research for and writing of the book had told its author about Englishness. "But perhaps there wasn't a great deal to say." And perhaps there were always people who did not want to hear. Faulks doubted very much whether his grandfather, who had fought in the first world war, ever spoke to his mother about it. Stephen's literal silence after the war's end spoke of a reluctance among the real-life veterans to share their experiences. Several readers spoke of the novel illuminating exchanges that they had had – or failed to have – with elderly relatives who had fought in the war. But this choice, prepared for by an earlier scene in which we are allowed into this character's thoughts, seemed to show how lives would go on, as if in defiance or neglect of the forgotten horror of the war.įorgetting was a theme. "I did realise that it was an odd thing to do," the author acknowledged. Another reader was puzzled by the "true ending" of the novel, a section set in the late 1970s, with the "last word" being given to Robert, the father to Elizabeth's child (Stephen's great-grandchild), a minor character "and not anyone I really warm to". Stephen, after all, gets little life in the novel beyond the war.
Sebastian Faulks contradicted a reader who found hope in the narrative structure.
Though his return to the light is not the end of the novel, it is the end of his part in it. Near the end of Birdsong, Stephen Wraysford is rescued by enemy soldiers after being trapped for days underground. I nvariably, readers at the Guardian book club want to ask an author about his or her choice of an ending for a novel.
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