In Memoriam (4*)

Gay romances penned by women--even as lyrical and well-researched as this one--don't resonate with me because I insist that all men are pigs.  Alice Winn tries very hard to convince us that the love that blossoms between two British public school boys on the battlefield during WWI--a conflict that killed six percent of the the country's adult male population by 1918--is genuine and she tells their story with great empathy but also elevates them beyond recognition.  In the end, her contrived story reminded me more than a little of Mary Renault, minus the homophobia, and a lot of Heartstopper, the sweet but deeply unrealistic Netflix series about young gay love.  

Gaunt and Ellwood first meet at Preshute where homosexuality is practiced casually and accepted so long as it doesn't involve osculation. Gaunt, a half-Bavarian brawler, declaims Homer in the original Greek and enjoys getting brutally fucked by an older classmate while Ellwood, a Jewish pretty boy who spouts Tennyson and overcomes anti Semitism with his deep pockets, has a talent for seduction.  Each has a crush on the other, unbeknownst to either but obvious to several of their incredibly accepting classmates.  While serving together on the Western front, they consummate their passion before the meat grinder of war chews them up.

When he and Ellwood were gentle with one another, there was a sense of awe to it. Their tenderness was hesitant and temporary, like a butterfly pausing on a child’s hand.

Obviously, Ms. Winn has never been to a gay bathhouse or a circuit party.

What she does best is viscerally describe the horrors of war, particularly the senselessness of the Battle of the Somme which killed nearly 20,000 Brits on the first day of an offensive that lasted more than four months.  She interrupts the narrative with lists of the dead, wounded and missing in the school newspaper, notices IRL from the archives of her alma mater that gave her the idea for the novel. Whether intentional or not, In Memoriam reminded me of AIDS in the scale of its devastation of a young, male cohort, especially during a scene where the lovers find a tranquil moment in a cemetery.

The birds chattered merrily on the wet brown branches. Daffodils sunned out among the headstones. How alive it all seemed, and how gracious—to die in an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions.

Winn is savvy enough not to leave her protagonists unscathed by trench warfare but I found their friendships with other classmates and soldiers more compelling than a love story so hidebound that use of their first names during pillow talk counts as a big moment.  Thanks to the contemporary accounts she fully acknowledges, Winn may understand the historical context in which her characters live quite well but in the end Gaunt and Ellwood suffer as much from their nobility as their actual injuries.