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Saturday 31 August 2013

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Hello! 
So for my first proper post back on my blog I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite ever books! This book is called Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. 
I'll tell you how I first got to know about this amazing book:
It was a normal weekday evening with nothing much on TV and my dad informed me that this period drama was on, set before and during the first world war. Immediate interest. For long as I can remember I have been almost worrying interested in both WW's but especially WW1. I recently went to France and Belgium to see the war graves and battlefields, but that is a whole other blog post. Anyway, I decided to watch a bit of it, it had already been on a little bit but I picked it up. It soon got to ten o'clock and Ii decided to hit the hay as I had college the next day, but it had sparked my interest. The next evening I went online and found the episodes. I watched the whole first episode again and then couldn't stop myself watching the second one aswell. It was so interesting, a mix of heart ache, love, joy, loss, pain and grief. All the things I believe make a brilliant, page turning story. A quick insight on the story is basically, a young English man (Stephen Wraysford) is sent by his employer to Amien, France to stay with a French family (The Azaire's) to experience the French cloth industry. He their falls in love with Mrs Azaire and after a few weeks of a secret affair they run away together. However both in the book and the TV drama, it flicks between times, making it ever so slightly harder to follow. It flicks from just before the war, when he's staying with the family, and then during the war, when he is a lieutenant in the army. I don't want to ruin the story for you, so I'll just say something happens between Stephen and Isabelle (Mrs Azaire) to break their bliss, and send Stephen off to war, but you'll have to watch or read it, to see what!    After I'd watched both TV episodes numerous times, captivated as I was, the avid reader I am I immediately looked up the book it had been based on. If the TV drama was this brilliant what would the book be like? I have also neglected to tell you that my dad thought I would like it as well because the lead man was quite nice to say the least, and far play to my dad, yes he is. In fact Birdsong also sparked my deepest love and admiration for a certain Eddie Redmayne. I fell in love with him, his acting and the story and I really think this story had such an impact on me. But anyway, back to the book search, as soon as I could I went into my local waterstones and found the book, which by this time the cover had been redone with the TV drama type cover. They only had this on in stock, and although I'd initially wanted the original cover, I didn't protest too much to the drama cover as it had the beautiful Eddie Redmayne on the front. To date I have read this book five times, on my six I think now. It never gets old, I will warn you, the book's ending is different to the drama, well not really different, there's just more in the book, it kind of explains more, and has, if I can say this with out ruining it, has another 'time period' at the end which add's to the story. 
Simply putting it, you need to read this book, it's a brilliant story, it's a love story, but also a history novel, it's a bit of everything, just read it! 
Lucy xxx       

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