Author(s): Alice Winn

Fiction | Sarah

An epic, gripping, heart-shattering love story about 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 and twin sister ask 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. 

Staff Notes

Alice Winn’s ‘In Memoriam’ is the most divine, heart-breaking debut tracking the love story between two soldiers in the First World War. Winn lamented the lack of good war writing and thus, wrote this epic tale in lieu. Beginning in 1914, you meet Gaunt and Ellwood, two firm friends who share a love for Greek heroes and romantic poetry, attending the same dreamy British boarding school in the countryside. Eventually the pair, alongside their classmates, find themselves being pushed to enlist and do so. Finding themselves in dire circumstances in the trenches together, they are pushed to finally realise their romantic feelings for each other. Interspersed with newspaper excerpts of the in memoriam section of their school paper, we as the readers scan for their names just as desperately as we would’ve in war times. One of my favourite reads of the year and one I’d like to push into everyone’s hands.

Recommended by Sarah.