Invisible things
Alice Wynn / Modern
The year is 1914, and thousands of young men are sacrificing their lives on both sides of the fence in World War I. But for Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and their classmates, safely ensconced at a boarding school in the English countryside, the violence of the front comes only as a distant echo reflected in newspaper articles. The news of the heroic deaths of their older friends stirs the hearts of the innocent boarding school students, giving the war a touch of thrilling adventure.
Gaunt, whose mother is German, is engaged in a private battle of his own - a desperate infatuation with his best friend, the charismatic and glamorous Elwood - unaware that Elwood has similar feelings for him. And when Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to dispel rumors that question their loyalty to England, Gaunt immediately does so, partly to escape his intense feelings for Elwood. To Gaunt's dismay, Elwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates follow. The war is far different and more terrifying than they imagined, and soon each of them finds themselves on their own journey into its depths.
"Unseen Things," Alice Wynne's virtuoso debut novel, is a larger-than-life story about the tragedy of war and the great love that blossoms in its shadow. The book was included in the best books of the year lists in The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
464 pages, 99 NIS.
