Testament of Youth in Our Shared Shelf

Jul 07, 2015 Colleen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, great-book-great-movie-or-tv-show, biography-autobiography

"One of the greatest accounts of war ever written"..."one of the best-loved writers of her time"...how did I miss this book? If you look at the list of books I've read, you'll see that I like fiction and non-fiction that take place during wars. But I'd never heard of Testament of Youth until I saw a trailer for the movie that was recently released.

Vera Brittain knew she was different from the other girls in the small English town she was raised in. While they were content to marry, settle down, "One of the greatest accounts of war ever written"..."one of the best-loved writers of her time"...how did I miss this book? If you look at the list of books I've read, you'll see that I like fiction and non-fiction that take place during wars. But I'd never heard of Testament of Youth until I saw a trailer for the movie that was recently released.

Vera Brittain knew she was different from the other girls in the small English town she was raised in. While they were content to marry, settle down, and have babies, she wanted something different. She wanted to go to college. She fought her way into Oxford and happily threw herself into her studies. She had a brother she adored and a group of "guy friends" who treated her like one of them. And unexpectedly, almost against her will, she met the love of her life. Roland considered her his intellectual equal. They argued and debated, and fell more and more deeply in love. They couldn't stand to be apart. Then World War I came along. Her brother, her guy friends, and Roland all enlisted. Optimistically, Vera and Roland got engaged.

This is not a spoiler--it says clearly on the back of the book that she lost all the men she loved. You know what's coming, but you hold out hope that maybe that isn't actually true. Maybe she "lost" one of these men when he became a prisoner of war, and when the war ended, he came back to her. Oh, how you hope that's the case. But, unfortunately, it's not a craftily formed statement, out to mislead you. She really did lose all the men she loved. So while you know what's coming, you're still not prepared. Each death is like a punch in the gut...every single time.

Yes, this is one of the greatest accounts of war ever written. I don't believe I've ever before read a book that tells you how in the hell you go on when you lose all the men you love. Vera's grief is palpable and heart-breaking. She found she simply couldn't continue on with her studies. She was driven to DO something, so she became a nurse. Her harrowing accounts of what it was like to serve right on the front are unforgettable. She was already a feminist but after the war, she fought even harder for women's rights. She also became a pacifist, traveling the country, bravely speaking of the futility of war. It was something she could do to honor the men she loved.

I don't believe I've ever thought of it in just this way, but WWI, and probably WWII, destroyed almost an entire generation of young men. They never got started with their lives, they never got a chance to fulfill their potential. As the book says, they simply vanished in the trenches. As the mother of three sons, I hope we're never, ever in that situation again. ...more

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