Fiery Deirdre Brannigan had opinions on everything. She certainly hated the very idea of war in 1914. Childhood pals Jack Oakley and Will Parsons thought it a grand adventure with their friends. But the crushing weight of her guilty conscience pushes Deirdre to leave Ireland and land directly in the fray. Meanwhile the five friends from Newfoundland blithely enlist. After all, the war couldn’t … couldn’t possibly last very long…
They learn quickly how wrong they are and each is torn apart by the carnage in France.
What began with enthusiastic dreams of parades and dances with handsome young soldiers turned into long days and nights in the hospital wards desperately trying to save lives. And for the good and decent young men in fine new uniforms aching to prove themselves worthy on the field of battle, the horrors of war quickly descended.
But it is also the war which brings them together. Deirdre’s path crosses with Jack and Will when they’re brought to her field hospital the first day of the slaughter on the Somme. Their lives part, their journeys forward fraught with physical and emotional scars tossing them through unexpected and often painful twists and turns. But somehow, a sliver of hope, love and redemption emerges. And their paths cross again in St. John’s.
When the guns finally fall silent, can Deirdre overcome her secret demons through a new life with battered Jack? Can shell-shocked Will confront his despotic father’s expectations to become the man his young family deserves?
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I’ve read quite a few novels recently that in a way or another involve WWI and veterans from that war. None of Us the Same by Jaffrey Walker is the first one that truly rings authentic. It’s a very subtle line. It isn’t easy for me to say what it is that makes this story different, because also the other novels I’ve read were very well-researched. The different isn’t in the research itself, I believe, it’s more in the personal experience an author can put into their story.
Jeffrey is a veteran himself, and this shows in many places, especially in the long section about the actual war. There is something very ‘normal’ about his war scenes, if this makes any sense. While the other novels I’ve read gave out a strong sense of the tragedy WWI had been, Jeffrey’s WWI has a flavour of everyday life. This is how millions of men and women lived everyday during that time. Sure, there were the big battles, but there were also the little things of life happening in the trenches.
The war scene are my favourite. Of course they are very relevant on a narrative level, but they are also very important for connecting with these characters. And as I said, for me there was an extra level of authenticity to them.
The rest of the novel deals with what the war left attached to every one of these characters. Interesting as it was, it wasn’t as involving as the war scenes (this is probably quite natural), and it was also quite episodic. Every episode was good, it let me come very near to the characters and I felt for all of them, but it was kind of isolated. Not really a problem, but I wonder whether a more organic plot would have enhanced the sense of belonging even further.
It’s a good story, well researched, written with compassion and with relatable characters. I enjoyed it.
Accounts and novels of the First World War often heap horror upon unimaginable horror as they describe the slaughter of that conflict. None of Us the Same is a different calibre of work. Jeffery Walker takes the lives of six characters caught up in the conflict, and skilfully weaves their stories through the great events of the war. Five are young men who volunteer to join the Newfoundland regiment, the last is an Irish nurse working behind the lines.
This is the individual’s view of the war, in which the reader is taken by Walker into the trenches and clearing stations of Gallipoli and the Western Front. We sense the impact of the shells, smell the musty earth of the dugout, feel the crawling of the lice and hear the whine of passing bullets. We accompany them on their journey, from youthful optimism to grim realities they encounter. Then we follow them further, to the clearing stations and base hospitals as they are treated for their physical and mental injuries.
But Walker’s odyssey does not stop there. We see the survivors returning to civilian life, and share with them their struggles to pick up the broken threads of their former lives back across the Atlantic. This is an epic work, meticulously researched and superbly told. A century has passed since the guns of the Western Front fell silent, yet Walker’s novel is still relevant today. In the haunted gaze of his soldiers we can recognise the same trauma borne by the veterans of our own time.