My Dear I Wanted To Tell You [Paperback]

This is a beautifully written book about life in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, when WWI broke out. Riley and Nadine meet in London when they are young children and have an instant connection. Nadine is from a "posh" family and Riley is just a commoner. A series of events through the next few years results in Riley joining up and going off to fight in France.

Ms. Young does an excellent job in my opinion of capturing a time and place in history. I have read other accounts of this War but none that captures it so vividly. Following these two young adults and their journey of love and loss during the most difficult, unexplainable tragedies that they face was for me like being there with them. It is written that well.

There is also Peter and Julia, a married couple who have also been separated by this War. Their capacity to handle the atrocities they are faced with because of the war is effecting them in a very different way than Riley and Nadine. They live outside themselves and the horrors of this war. Nadine and Riley are living in the reality of what they are dealing with and share and understand. The author displays how people are so different and are sometimes just hanging on by a thread.

Then there is Rose, a nurse, Peter's sister and a woman most likely to never marry and have children and dealing with all of this in her own way as well.

I truly loved reading this book and can still feel the hearts and souls of these people within me. Fantastic!!

"My Dear I wanted to tell you" tries very hard to capture a large segment of the reading public with its many themes. Part war story, love story, class struggle and those left behind saga. The author is not always successful.

The working class Riley Purefoy is taken in literally and figuratively by the Waverly's. At an early age, he is shown a different life-style. His love and hope for a future with their daughter Nadine is his dream. When an embarrassing misunderstanding hastens his decision to enlist, he works himself up the ranks. Nadine Waverly, a strong willed women, is a match for Riley, on and off the battlefield.

Peter Locke, is Riley's upper class commanding officer. While he serves gallantly, the war changes him emotionally, and the understanding of marriage between him and his wife. Julia Locke is a vapid women, whose essence is to please and look good for her husband. When she is left behind to cope, she looses her identify. Rose, Peter's plain cousin, is given a chance to move front and center due to her important work at a V.A. hospital with a plastic surgeon.

The lives of these characters on/off the battlefield play out through the war.
Some of their stories were beautifully rendered, others fell short. Personally, I wish I could have learned more about Rose, and less about Julia. I know that not everybody handles adversity well, but she appeared pointless. While I did not find the violence gratuitous, readers should be aware that the war is front and center to this book. I would have preferred more of Riley and Nadine, especially more of their earlier lives together. Many secondary characters were only touched upon briefly and appeared to be more pivotal in the lives of the central characters. Julia's mother for instance, who appeared to be a shrew.

I could not help but make comparisons with two other World War I books I have read. "Atonement" by Ian McEwan was one of the best books I have ever read. Last year's "Postmistress" by Sarah Blake, I was not interested enough to finish. I would rate this book somewhere in the middle. Parts were so memorable, they will linger in my mind. Sometimes less is simply enough.

This World War I love story makes no claims on greatness -- it will be marketed explicitly as a romance -- but I read it with tears running down my cheeks. Of course I am British, and the setting and genre made me entirely comfortable. These are my people, my corner of England, my father's war. This is the kind of novel they have been writing since the first war ended. They still do, actually; this is the world of the earlier MAISIE DOBBS books, and many literary novels such as Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT and A. S. Byatt's THE CHILDREN'S BOOK call on the same tradition. And this is a very strong book of its type; the war scenes are believable, the major characters are sympathetic and well-rounded, and the emotion flows freely.

It begins in Kensington Gardens with the meeting of two eleven-year-old children, Nadine Waveney and Riley Purefoy. Nadine's cousin throws a snowball that knocks Riley off balance into the Round Pond; her mother brings him into their nearby house to dry off. They come from different backgrounds (this is an English story, after all): Nadine's father is a famous conductor, Riley's is a fireman. But other circumstances intervene. Riley is asked to pose by a painter friend of the family, and is virtually adopted by the older man; Nadine visits regularly for lessons. Then war breaks out, ending their idyll just as they are beginning to acknowledge their attraction, at least to themselves.

A parallel story takes place in Sidcup, Kent, where a handsome English gentleman, Peter Locke, lives with his lovely new wife at Locke Hall, commuting occasionally to the City for meetings at his family firm, Locke and Locke. He too will volunteer for Flanders, where he will become Riley's commanding officer and later his friend. Young's choice of Sidcup (now a rather undistinguished London suburb) is not random; it was the site of the hospital where the New Zealand plastic surgeon, Harold Gillies, performed his pioneering work of facial reconstruction on injured soldiers. Young's title is actually the first line of the army form letter sent by wounded men to their next of kin, and each of the characters will either be wounded by the war (though not necessarily physically), or work with the wounded to begin the slow work of reconstruction.

It is not a perfect book. Peter's wife Julia is a less rounded character than the others, and one feels she has just been included to complete the theme. The pace slows down too much at the halfway point, relying too much on inner monologue rather than speech and acting. And then the final sprint seems a little too rapid to be believable. But when Young ends the book (in tribute to the celebrated close of Joyce's THE DEAD) with the words "...a healing silence from which some peace might be redeemed," we too feel the possibility of redemption. Much has been broken, much has changed, but much can yet be repaired.