Riley: He has a bit of a same sex encounter and decides to run off to war to prove he's a real man, not a "nancy. And there are two witchy witchy mothers that would seem monstrously misogynist if written by a man -- Young's gentle touch fails her there. A novel that didn't quite seem to know what it wanted to be, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a surprisingly rounded WWI story that goes beyond the typical narrative. J'ai adoré ce livre qui raconte avec beaucoup de justesse et de finesse la problématique des classes sociales dans l'Angleterre d'avant guerre. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

The postcard continues, providing the soldier with a tick box to indicate the severity of his injury. Ultimately, this book got me through two plane rides and I was totally absorbed in it from beginning to end. From the day in 1907 that eleven-year-old Riley Purefoy meets Nadine Waveney, daughter of a well-known orchestral conductor, he takes in the difference between their two families: his, working-class; hers, "posh" and artistic. For me personally it was an eye-opener to another world - both of my grandfathers died very young because of that war and I therefore never met either of them. In Belgium, Riley comes under the command of Captain Peter Locke, a sensitive musical man, who takes a liking to Riley and is keen to see him promoted.It took me around 5 days just to get to the middle of it, whereas I'm usually finishing a book by that time. I didn't really feel caught up in it until the second half, when it settles down and became (for me) far more involving and moving.

Riley and Nadine's relationship is the central thread, but too often we were told about how they felt for one another rather than feeling it. Character development was weak (with the exception of one standout character who was repeatedly sidelined, alas), as were the somewhat unnecessary and unexplained love stories (which I felt the book could have done without, or at least have had them at a much lower key). After the Battle of the Somme, Gillies treated 2,000 cases of jaw and facial mutilation and a key part of this novel is the telling of the tragic stories of some of the patients that were treated during this time. Staying at home, nobody thinks her capable of doing something useful, so she slowly begins to lose her mind.

All does end well, when the armistice is announced, in a Christmas reunion at Locke Hill, where Purefoy brings the drunken Locke, and Nadine accepts hospitality from Rose. What I liked about this was the candid way in which the class differences and prejudices were looked at, in a manner that was fresh and straightforward. Young interweaves these characters with some fictionalised versions of some very real people, not least the inspirational Major Gillies whose work with injured soldiers was brilliant not least as he was making it up as he went along. While this book was a gruesomely realistic tale of the brutality of war and the effects on those in the front lines and at home, it lacked this soul-splitting romance that I was expecting.