“My Dear I Wanted to Tell You” by Louisa Young

What is it with Sam continually giving me books that make me want to cry? (If you can refer to two in succession as "continually.") Is he just testing my resolve? Well, I'll tell you what. I've come up with a new system, even better than disguising tears as sweat. I lean back in my chair and raise my book above me so that I have to tilt my head back while I read. This way the tears disappear back inside me, somewhere behind my eyeballs, rather than coming out in front of them. I'm destroying the evidence. It's quite clever, really.

But yeah this was another moving story. Also encompassing unspeakable tragedy (but this time the Great War rather than Aberfan), and also so terribly British. The main character is Riley Purefoy, a handsome but lower-class young British man who, despite (or maybe because of) his love for upper-class Nadine Waveney, runs off to Flanders to join the army and fight against the Huns. It's all very horrors-of-war which you know I hate, but as it was heavy on the humanity and light on the strategy, I managed. There are also three other characters who are almost as main but not quite: Riley's commanding officer, Peter Locke; Peter's beautiful but vapid wife waiting for him at home (she was so silly and yet I still felt sorry for her); and Peter's homely but so very helpful cousin Rose, who works as a nurse during the war. Three guesses whose nurse she ends up being.

It's funny how much I liked this book in the end, because I was not impressed when I first started reading it. I actually put it down and read two other books before I picked it up again.