Faulks, Sebastian

(British, 1953– )

Much of Faulks's writing explores the impact of war upon relationships between individuals. Birdsong (1993) spans three generations from the First World War to the 1990s. A young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, falls in love with Isabelle Azaire while serving in France. The descriptions of Stephen's experiences in the dark, surreal world of the trenches are vivid. Faulks's characterization of comradeship amongst the men struggling together in these horrific conditions is very moving. Charlotte Gray (1998) is set in England and France during the Second World War, and explores a love-affair which is shaped and thwarted by war. Charlotte has a brief but intense affair with an RAF pilot. When his plane is lost over France, she contrives to go there, work in the Resistance, and search for him. Faulks examines the ways in which hope can survive beyond reason in times of war. In On Green Dolphin Street (2001) the war that Faulks uses as his backdrop is the Cold War. Set in Washington and Moscow at the unstable dawn of the Kennedy era, it is the story of married Englishwoman Mary van der Linden who falls for Frank Renzo, a dashing American newspaperman, just as the world seems ready to collapse around them.

Nevil Shute, Pat Barker, Erich Maria Remarque. See ROMANCE  DJ