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After all, homosexuality was still illegal in England at the time. They spent their days squandering money, hitting each other, writing bad poems, and their greatest agony in life was catching feeling for their friend. When we first met them, they were spoiled, annoying, boyishly gallant, and so, so full of life. In this story, we follow a bunch of English boys in an elite boarding school. But I've never read a version of WWI that is as bleak, gloomy, heart-wrenching, and horrific as this book. Depending on the author's prose and the theme of the story, the same war can be portrayed with different focuses and in different ways. There's probably a poem for this feeling inside me out there somewhere but not in my head, which is utterly empty and numb. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.Īn epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle-an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood-without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. It’s 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. “A devastating love story…Gaunt and Ellwood will live in your mind long after you’ve closed the final pages.” -Maggie O’Farrell, best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait “In Memoriam is the story of a great tragedy, but it is also a moving portrait of young love, and there is often a lightness to the book.”- The New York Times