≫ PDF The Wars Timothy Findley 9780571207992 Books

The Wars Timothy Findley 9780571207992 Books

Download As PDF : The Wars Timothy Findley 9780571207992 Books

The Wars Timothy Findley 9780571207992 Books

A gripping portrayal of life in the trenches of the First World War. Characters very real and descriptions make you feel you are right there on the front lines. Detail carried some new information for me about this war. It's a sad book, as any realistic portrayal of war must be.


Tags : The Wars [Timothy Findley] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Robert Ross is a Canadian officer caught up in the nightmare world of World War I trench warfare; a world of mud and smoke,Timothy Findley,The Wars,Gardners Books,0571207995,First World War fiction,Fiction

The Wars Timothy Findley 9780571207992 Books Reviews

Timothy Findley has written an important anti-war WWI novel, comparable to Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration trilogy. Even a poorly-taught English class (in Canada) did not blunt the impact of this powerful book -- and now, in the US in the fall of '01, the effects of war on the psyche are painfully pertinent. Read it with 21st century eyes -- The similarities between trench warfare and the modern war as fought in Desert Storm are chilling -- not in terms of how men specifically fought, but in terms of the impact of the alienation, the sense of helplessness, the isolation, and the sheer horror of it all, on the young men (and today women) who do the fighting. Whatever your politics, give this book a chance.
This novel is about the experiences of a Canadian man in World War 1. The flow of the story is occasionally interrupted by the activities of a researcher investigating the life of Robert Ross (a Second Lieutenant in the Canadian Army) in some kind of archive or interviewing people who met Ross during his lifetime. It is never made clear what is happening; why is the researcher/interviewer doing his investigations? Why is he writing this account (i.e. the novel)? There is no real conclusion to the novel or resolution of the researcher plot. Findley has Ross die shortly after World War 1 and the researcher plot abruptly ends.
The sections of the novel that are actually about fighting in the trenches are reasonably good. I think Findley properly emphasizes how dirty, mud-filled and wretched the trenches of World War 1 were. Occasionally, there are flashbacks to the protagonist's family in Canada, which were poorly executed. Findley should have focused on the actual war and avoided these diversions.
In Canada, this novel won the Governor General's Award in 1977 but I don't see why it is so spectacular. There is a sense that the protagonist is something of a controversial figure (he deserts the army and shoots some Canadian soldiers) but Ross' history and legacy is simply left too ambiguous.
In rating this novel, I wanted to give it 2.5 stars, but alas, does not allow that. The novel simply strikes me as mediocre; there is nothing exceptional to it.
The Wars is a memory of Robert Ross, a nineteen year old Canadian Soldier who fought in the First World War, as reconstructed by the narrator through articles, photographs and interviews of those who knew him during his short life. It is before this life ended that controversy surrounds, when he is purported to have committed such unthinkable atrocities that remain unnamed until the conclusion of the tale.
Beginning with the loss of his eldest sister to the disease Spina Bifida, the story moves to his resulting enlistment to the Canadian Army, brief training in the general tactics of war, and shipment overseas to join in the all-consuming chaos of the First World War.
Spread across the battle fields of Europe, the life of Robert Ross re-enacted as the pieces are brought together. First person accounts of the utterly humiliating circumstances, impotence, and insanity he encounters as the fires that pursue him throughout his life are interwoven throughout to complete the picture of a man misunderstood for the crimes he committed.
It is these first person accounts that lead us through the plot in an attempt not to justify, but to perhaps give the reader some insight as to why Ross' life ended so clearly counter to how it had begun.
Timothy Findley set out with a purpose in The Wars, which was to illustrate the insanity of war by manipulating the conventions of how atrocity is understood, and finally tearing these conventions down altogether. To do this, he took the fictitious example of a soldier who had dishonoured himself in battle, and then forces us to understand how and why such a thing could occur. For a more in depth analysis, check out yourwords dot ca. The result is the destruction of our conventional understanding and acceptance of military law, a societal application invented by propagandists and furthered by arms dealers, therefore opening our ability to not only see, but recognize the destruction of the individual through such an overwhelming ordeal that is often minimalized through sensationalistic media-headline appointed terms such as "tragedy" or "catastrophe". It is for this reason that the book should be a part of everyone's education.
The Wars is a novel filled with some very powerful moments of awe inspiring writing. Mr. Findley is at the top of his game with this text.
The story, which flips from the late seventies, to 1915 Canada, to the battlefields of WW I is really a simple tale about people who see so much bad in the world, and yet who also try to do some good, and as with most actions in our lives, it has both good and bad consequences. Mr. Findley does not overly develop any of his characters, a motif of his, and this forces the reader to do a lot of thinking on their own. Some readers (based on some posted reviews) hate to think. But, if you don't allow this novel to digest then you will miss the point.
One of the book's main points is that History is not just faded photos and dates, but rather real lives, and feelings, that in the moment were not history at all. The fact that some day some person will look back at our existence with the cold calculating eyes of a historian is chilling to the reader. The reason is simple, just like the characters in the text who cannot explain their motives or feelings, we too will be judged by those who can only look at our actions, and not know why or the thoughts behind them. A sobering contemplation.
The Wars takes a long hard look at the oft forgotten first world war and makes it real and immediate to the reader. We then gain a greater appreciation of the past, and of our own existence, because we see how all life is "good and ill mixed together".
An excellent choice for book clubs.
A gripping portrayal of life in the trenches of the First World War. Characters very real and descriptions make you feel you are right there on the front lines. Detail carried some new information for me about this war. It's a sad book, as any realistic portrayal of war must be.