ALICE WINN

Es 1914 y la Primera Guerra Mundial no deja de cobrarse la vida de miles de jóvenes en ambos bandos de la contienda. Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood y sus compañeros de clase, a salvo en un idílico internado de la campiña inglesa, sienten la violencia del frente como algo lejano. Y las noticias de las muertes heroicas de sus amigos no hacen más que volver la guerra más emocionante. Gaunt, que es medio alemán, está ocupado librando su propia batalla: está enamorado hasta las trancas de su mejor amigo, el encantador y elegante Ellwood, y no tiene ni idea de que Ellwood siente lo mismo por él. Cuando la familia de Gaunt le pide que se aliste para evitar el rechazo al que se enfrentan por sus raíces alemanas, Gaunt obedece de inmediato, aliviado de escapar de sus sentimientos abrumadores hacia Ellwood. Sin embargo, para espanto de Gaunt, Ellwood no tarda en aparecer también en el frente, y el resto de sus compañeros lo siguen poco después. Ahora, sumidos en una realidad lóbrega, la muerte los rodea y acecha, y nadie sabe quién será el siguiente. In Memoriam es una historia épica sobre las tragedias devastadoras de la guerra y el romance prohibido que florece en sus garras. Un debut sobrecogedor.

In Memoriam

小燕

I stood as he pressed by, and I thought, Why are you at Ypres? Why are you not sitting in a courtyard in Algiers, eating a ripe orange? We have conquered the world with promises that could not be kept. We told those Algerians that their civilisation was no good, that they must have ours instead, we carried our white man’s burden dutifully, enlightening Indians—Indians! They who built the Taj Mahal! And Egyptians! For we knew better than their pyramids! We swarmed through Africa and America because we were better than they, of course we were, we were making war humane, and now it has broken down and they are dragged into hell with us. We have doomed the world with our advancements, with our democracy that is so much better than whatever they’ve thought of, with our technology that will so improve their lives, and now Algerian men must choke to death on their own melted insides in wet Belgian trenches and I—

Except that had been a form of obedience, too, thought Ellwood—to a pre-existing command. He had been obeying the unwritten instructions in Gaunt’s terrible letter after the Second Battle of Ypres: 

“I wish to God I could see you again before I die.”

 And Ellwood, obedient as ever, had enlisted instantly.

He wondered if Gaunt knew that he would do anything for him. “My dust would hear her and beat, / Had I lain for a century dead,” provided Tennyson, helpfully.

Amalie Elisabeth

And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.

He was simmering with a restlessness like that he felt in the boxing ring; a determination to hurt and be hurt, an impulse towards disaster and destruction, and nothing else would have satisfied him.

He wanted to make him bleed, and then tend to the wounds.

Laura Dobie

If Ellwood were a girl, he might have held his hand, kissed his temple. He might have bought a ring and tied their lives together. 

But Ellwood was Ellwood, and Gaunt had to be satisfied with the weight of his head on his shoulder.

Gaunt turned over to face Ellwood and caught his eye. Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt's heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.

"If my mother had had money, you can be sure she'd not have spent it paying strangers to raise me," said Hayes.

"Sixty thousand casualties," said Pritchard. 

Gaunt forced down his fear. It was amazing, all the different textures fear could have. He thought he would prefer to face machine guns than look at the papers and find Ellwood's name there, permanent as a tombstone.

"Has anyone ever told you that your pessimism is a form of selfishness?" Gaunt blinked. “No." "Well, it is," said Pritchard.

In Memoriam quotes

Join the club