A Beckoning War
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. It’s September 1944, in Italy, and the allied armies are closing in on the retreating Axis powers. Exhausted and lost, Jim tries to command his combat company under fire, while waiting desperately for letters from his wife Marianne. Joining the army not out of some admirable patriotic sentiments but rather because of his own failings and restlessness, he finds himself fighting in a war that is far from glorious.
Farley Mowat based his beautiful and wrenching anti-war memoir, And No Birds Sang, on the Italian campaign in World War II. Now with echoes of war ringing again, Matthew Murphy has taken the same campaign to tell a story of love and war, brilliantly capturing our ambiguous relationship to war.
A Beckoning War is a modern story on a modern theme based on past events. It is both exquisitely written and meticulously researched.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Through the eyes of a young Canadian infantry officer, Murphy's debut gives readers a view into the horrors of battle in WWII and also into the pain of those who were left behind at home. Jim McFarlane signs up for service partly to escape his teaching job and troubled marriage and partly to prove that he is as brave as his younger brother, who is in the Air Force. Jim's wife, Marianne, pleads with him not to go overseas, but once he decides to enlist, there is no turning back. Any romantic notions Jim had of the war are quickly dispelled by the reality of it: the mind-numbing wait in the muddy trenches, exploding shells that bring sudden death, and the uncertainty of when to attack or retreat. Although he is promoted to officer, Jim suffers from a paralyzing fear that can only be quelled by alcohol, even in the thick of battle. Murphy has a poetic style that at times follows Hemingway's stream-of-consciousness path into a shell-shocked soldier's fevered dreams. He vividly and movingly tells the story of many frightened young men who went off to fight what they thought would be a glorious war but found only pain and suffering.
