This was such a beautiful book. I barely knew what it was about when I started it, only that it followed two soldiers in the First World War who fall in love at the front. But this is not a sentimental story. The horrors of war leap from the page.

The book opens with In Memoriam notices in the school magazine of the boarding school where both boys are still pupils. Former students who have been killed, all so terribly young. Soon enough, Elwood and Gaunt follow them to the front, where they experience things no one, and certainly not such young people, should ever have to endure.

The pace of the novel is high. Especially at the beginning, names of ever-new schoolmates and later fellow soldiers come at you thick and fast, and before you have truly gotten to know them, they are sent to the front or killed. I found myself wanting to know them better, but perhaps this is Winn’s way of showing how quickly these young men were forced to grow up, and how little time they had to truly get to know one another, or even themselves.

Of course, throughout the entire book you hope that things will turn out well for Elwood and Gaunt, but as the story unfolds you also sense that, no matter what happens, these boys will never be the same again. It is a painful and deeply affecting story that was hard to shake off, and one that opened my eyes to the horrors of the First World War, a conflict that is somewhat less familiar in Dutch history.