REMEMBRANCE

Five teens from a small Scottish town become caught up in the maelstrom of WWI. The story opens in 1915; the war has been going on for almost a year, and no one now expects a swift and easy victory. The wealthy and well-bred Charlotte Armstrong-Barnes defies her mother by taking up nursing to join the cause; her brother Francis does the same by refusing to take a commission. Storekeeper’s son John Malcolm Dundas looks forward to coming of age to join up, as does his younger brother Alex; meanwhile, sister Maggie begins to question the assumed role of women in society and starts to dream of greater things. The expected love interests ensue: Charlotte and John Malcolm fall head-over-heels, but their romance is cut tragically short by German fire; Francis and Maggie enjoy a slowly burgeoning relationship of the mind that becomes love as they take their separate parts in the struggle in France. New to the American market, Carnegie Medalist (Whispers in the Graveyard) Breslin’s narrative moves back and forth to give each character’s perspective, occasionally allowing them to speak directly via letters, but the two who come most to life are the theoretically inclined Francis and Maggie. Charlotte, having lost love early, takes on a virtually saintly mien, and Alex rarely emerges as his own character. A tendency to tell rather than show—“The jingoistic tones of the headlines contrasting with the constant news of death lowered [Francis’s] spirits. He felt helpless in the face of what he saw as some desperate intent by civilization to destroy itself . . . ”—keeps the reader at arm’s length and hinders involvement in what could have been a three-hanky story. As it is, it remains a perfectly serviceable historical novel, but nothing more. (Fiction. 12+)