I bought Testament of Youth way back in January and between the swings and the roundabouts didn't think to pick it up. To be honest I think its size scared me a little. It's hefty (600 or so pages) but the other evening with the rain dripping endlessly outside I lit the fire and started it. Of course Vera Brittain's writing is such that you get effortlessly sucked into her story, beginning with her early life and her battle to get out of provincial Buxton and into Oxford. Of course the Great War gets in the way of those plans and takes the lives of her brother Edward, her fiance Roland Leighton and their friends, creating the lost generation, and of course changing her life too. If the summer continues in its dismal way I shall have lots of fireside reading time - although I'm wondering should this be my August and September choice for The Year in Books and that way I can stop hyperventilating over its size...
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