As I write this, the first episode of a television adaptation of ‘Birdsong’ has just gone out on BBC 1, so if you’re wanting to watch it, don’t read this column. It’s taken nearly twenty years for an adaptation to be made, despite the popularity of the book and it’s status as a classic that’s taught in schools, so it’s fitting that this should be celebrated.
I read ‘Birdsong’ as a teenager and completely fell in love with it. It’s hard to believe that in 1993, when it was first published, there were two schools of thought regarding World War One; either it was completely ignored, or the only connection people had to it was the poetry of the period that was taught in schools. Faulks, in his introduction to the book (and as an aside, let me encourage everyone to read author’s introductions – Ken Follett’s introduction to ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ is an example of pure genius), notes that he took the advice of a fellow writer, which comprised of “put something in that people don’t know”; many people don’t know about the network of tunnels dug underneath the trenches in northern France in order to lay mines beneath the German trenches, or the soldiers who dug them. Nowadays it seems inconceivable that any aspect of either World War should be forgotten, but ‘Birdsong’ succeeds in telling a story that is both different and new.
The story progresses through three separate time periods; that of Stephen Wraysford, a young man sent to work at a textile factory in France in 1910; Stephen’s experiences in the war in 1916, particularly the Battle of the Somme; and the story of Stephen’s granddaughter in 1978 as she discovers what happened to him while struggling through some difficult circumstances of her own.
When we first meet Stephen, he is idealistic, energetic and passionate, and suffocating for two reasons; the heat of Amiens, which intensifies everything he experiences including a strike at the factory where Stephen is an observer, and his love for Isabelle, wife of Rene Azaire, the factory owner who Stephen is staying with. Stephen’s love for Isabelle is later reciprocated and they embark on an affair that has far-reaching consequences.
Later, when Stephen is in the trenches, he is a changed man. The end of the affair with Isabelle leaves him a broken shell of a man, living on memories and disliked by the men under his command. Faulks’s descriptions of fighting and digging and mud and rain make the trenches sound like the hell on earth that they were, and the fierce comradeship felt between the soldiers is one of the few things that keeps them going. Stephen, after being injured, tries to come to terms with both the past and the present, and makes some friends among his men, including Michael Weir and Jack Firebrance, two characters who have a huge impact on him.
In some ways, the third narrative strand involving Stephen’s granddaughter is almost incidental, but it goes a long way towards explaining the aftermath of the war, particularly from Stephen’s point of view. Elizabeth is a wonderful character, though, and this portion of the novel is as interesting when it’s about her as it is about her voyage of discovery.
Where the book really succeeds is in portraying the devastating effects of love and war; Stephen experiences both, and never really recovers from either. There’s a secondary theme running throughout the story about parents and children, both lost and found, and the constant loss of the men in the trenches who are all someone’s sons is a counterpoint to the birth of Elizabeth’s own son.
Above everything else, ‘Birdsong’ is a stunning portrayal of the experiences of all kinds of men under the sort of stress people don’t normally suffer under, and the effect that it had on them, reaching in the future and influencing their lives for years to come.
