For the past eight months or so, we’ve both been obsessed over one particular book — Alice Winn’s In Memoriam — and it’s just your luck that we’ve finally reached its release date! Now all of you will be able to read this book too and suffer just like we did! But, just in case you needed a bit more convincing, check out our review below!
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A gripping, heart-shattering love story between two soldiers in the First World War
It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt’s German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.
The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long, their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.
An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
In Memoriam
Alice Winn
Rep: Jewish gay mc, gay mc
CWs: gore, violence, suicide, period typical antisemitism, period typical homophobia, internalised homophobia, PTSD, panic attacks
Release: 7th March 2023
