Birdsong is set in the time right before and also during the Great War. It beautifully captures the things from that era on both the personal and national scale. The story in this chapter revolves around Steve, who is a fine young Englishman. In 1910, he arrives in Amiens. His life totally changed in a bad way. He has to go through a lot of traumatic events all those early years of his life. The traumatic things were mainly dominated by the stealthy love affair, which literally tore apart all his family, who he lives to the unimaginable familiarity of the Great War itself.
The book is a contemporary fiction. It is written by Sebastian Faulks in an awe-inspiring manner. Literary writing followers of fiction would adore his style of writing for sure. The book has an excellent story, which is delivered with care by the author and definitely has a lot of research been done for it.
The book actually explores the close-up fears of war and that is done better than any other book, which you could have read on the topic. It has a beautiful love story right at the start, but it gets completely overshadowed by the horrific scenes of war. Overall, you will definitely have a great time listening to this one.
The narration of this chapter is done by Samuel West, who is a fine narrator and managed to give a satisfactory performance. Rather, he mostly had good reviews. It is more so because of his good reputation and the prior experience he has. He has done some brilliant work in narrations of a few books in 90s, which are all still memorable.
