The Return of the Soldier

[Soren]

http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pp/Dover_Compl...he_Soldier.html

I've not seen this book before, have you read it?

[norwood]

This link may be useful ....

Audio Book

Norwood

[Soren]

Norwood thanks for the I listened to it whilst working in the studio great stuff!

[Dragon]

Yes, I read The Return of the Soldier a few years ago and enjoyed it. I thought it was a very humane and complex novel. Rebecca West's descriptions are almost physical, quite delicate and fluid, with exquisite observation of colour, and I can imagine they would appeal to an artist in they way they capture mood.

It's very readable, yet poignant and painful. Chris returns from the Front mentally wrecked, having lost his memory, seeking the plain Margaret, rather than his wife who eagerly awaits his homecoming in their beautiful house. He has completely forgotten his marriage. The emotional agonies of the women concerned - the brittle wife who looks like a girl on a magazine cover, Margaret who is reluctantly involved in Chris's new life, the insightful observer and narrator cousin Jenny - are confronted and explored. Kitty and Jenny have to consider whether to try to bring Chris back mentally or face the possibility that the man they knew has gone forever. Alongside this are the author's perceptive observations of the effects of mental disability. It is both frightening and coldly detached.

It was published in 1918. I don't think that Rececca West was inventing an emotional fiction, though the novel is fictional. She would have been only too aware of the effects of warfare on people's minds.

Gwyn