An enjoyable read set during WW1, an era which I love reading about. I found the constant use of surnames made it hard to remember characters who later showed up and were blown to bits - it would have had more emotional resonance if I had been able to connect with the characters by remembering them, but I understand that the upper classes seem to call each other by their surnames and I'm a working classer so that didn't work for me. Writing was easy to read, no more.

PR gifted from @netgalley

This is a 5 star read. In my view, there are 3 stories here
1. The relationship between 2 main characters,
2. The First World War and
3. The network/class system from English public boys schools.

The relationship is a roller coaster from start to end. And the entire book is set before the guys reach 20 - such maturity is hard to fathom today. The narrative on the war is some of the most harrowing and descriptive I’ve ever read. It is truly shocking and largely this took over the story for me. And the third element of the boys at officer level in the war all knowing each other from English society really surprised me, not in a good or bad way, just interesting to see how it plays out, even outside the school system.

Heartstopper on the Western Front; swoon! It’s literary fiction set in the trenches of WWI, yes, but also a will-they-won’t they romance that opens at an English boarding school. Oh they will (have sex, that is), before the one-third point, but the lingering questions are: will Ellwood and Gaunt both acknowledge that this is love and not just sex, as it is for so many teenage boys at their school (either consensually, as buddies; or forced by bullies); and will one or both survive the war? “It was ridiculous, incongruous for Ellwood to be bandying about words like ‘love’ when they were preparing to venture out into No Man’s Land.”

Winn is barely past 30 (and looks like a Victorian waif in her daguerreotype-like author photo), yet keeps a tight control of her tone and plot in this debut novel. She depicts the full horror of war, with detailed accounts of battles at Loos, Ypres and the Somme, and the mental health effects on soldiers, but in between there is light-heartedness: banter, friendship, poetry. Some moments are downright jolly. I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Adam Bede is the only novel available and most of them have read it four times. Gaunt is always the more pessimistic of the two main characters, while Ellwood’s initially flippant sunniness darkens through what he sees and suffers.

I only learned from the Acknowledgements and Historical Note that Preshute is based on Marlborough College, a posh school local to me, and that certain particulars are drawn from Siegfried Sassoon, as well as other war literature. It’s clear the book has been thoroughly, even obsessively, researched. But Winn has a light touch with it, and characters who bring social issues into the narrative aren’t just 2D representatives of them but well rounded and essential: Gaunt (xenophobia), Ellwood (antisemitism), Hayes (classism), Devi (racism); not to mention disability and mental health for several. I loved how Ellwood is devoted to Tennyson and often quotes from his work, including the book-length elegy In Memoriam itself. This plus the “In Memoriam” columns of the school newspaper give the title extra resonance.

I thought I was done with war fiction, but really what I was done with was worthy, redundant Faulks-ian war fiction. This was engaging, thrilling (a prison escape!), and, yes, romantic.

In Memoriam is a debut, and I’m perplexed. Alice Winn sucked me into Gaunt’s and Ellwood’s story and took me from the idyllic green English countryside with privileged, spoiled school boys reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and glorifying fighting to the nauseating WWI trenches where those boys’ lives changed forever, watching soldiers’ eyes bulging out of their heads because of gas attacks or shells killing multiple soldiers in an instance. But PTSD didn’t exist back then …

“Ellwood had a sudden image of blood pouring down the train carriage, the way it had flooded down the trench when one of his men had had his insides scooped out by shrapnel from a trench mortar.”

Alice also powerfully showed the differences between those privileged boys and the working class, which made chills run over my body; eighteen/nineteen-year-old officers, sometimes even minors, giving the often much older privates orders, letting them march into a certain death.

”Over the top, you cowardly bastards!” I cried, my voice breaking, because I did not want to do it, I didn’t, Elly, I knew those men, but what other choice had I? They were stupid with fear, and only more fear would move them.

This story is violent and raw, harrowing, and, at the same time, mind-blowing. Alice swept me off my feet with her brilliant prose, the perfect use of a non-linear timeline and humanizing both sides of the battle. She pictured real and flawed characters and let me fall head over heels in love with Gaunt (Henry) and Ellwood (Elly/Sidney). Those two boys who were so in love with each other but didn’t dare to tell the other, Elly afraid to lose their friendship, Gaunt afraid to give in to what it meant to be in love with a man, both afraid to lose the one they loved the most.

It was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.

I treasured the bonds that grew between boys and men, sometimes deep friendships and at other times a short-term brotherhood, and how most men treated the relationship between Ellwood and Gaunt so casually. His fellow classmates knew Ellwood liked boys, and they just let him. And Gaunt learned that something he found so hard to accept wasn’t that difficult for others.

“To have something that he had thought so grave be treated lightly and playfully—it was reassuring. He felt as if he had shed something, some weight he had not known he carried.”

This book, this book, this book. It made me smile, it made me weep, it made me angry, it made me ache. In Memoriam is utterly gorgeous, a genre-bending story, historical, literary, an M/M romance, action-packed and still so character-driven, and therefore a book that, in my opinion, should become a bestseller, translated in many, many languages. This book deserves to be the next The Song of Achilles! So please, please, read this story!

“When he and Ellwood were gentle with one another, there was a sense of awe to it. Their tenderness was hesitant and temporary, like a butterfly pausing on a child’s hand.”

A classically written story set in world war 1. Beautifully written it tells the tale of forbidden love in a very different time with different attitudes. It is both touching and tragic at the same time. Highly recommended.

This is a compelling book which kept me reading right through, and in tears for quite a part of it!
It follows two schoolboys, Henry (Heinrich) Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood who are 17 at the start of the book and only 19 or 20 by the end. They are at school at the start of WW1, and the book starts with notices from The Preshutian, their school magazine, listing the young men who have been killed or injured.
We get to know Gaunt and Ellwood's peers in the context of their public school, then see what happens as first Gaunt then Ellwood joins up.
The book gives an amazingly in depth insight into the awfulness of the experience of soldiers in WW1. It addresses issues of class, but its key focus is the relationship between the two men at a time when homosexuality is illegal, and everything in their culture holds them back.
It is worth reading Alice Winn's notes at the end to find out about the books she read and the other sources she has used to create such a powerful novel.
Very much recommended.

What an incredible debut novel : the horrors of war with the haunting feelings between the two protagonists are what makes this novel a tragically beautiful story.

For fans of Song of Achilles and Nothing new on the Western front !

I received a digital ARC from NetGalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was surprised by this book in the right way. I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to enjoy the fact this book covers the story of private schoolboys who have Oxford and Cambridge in their future, almost seeming reminiscent of novels like Brideshead Revisited. Instead, the novel covers all sorts of people, not just the more privileged ones who entered as higher ranking officers. As the times changed, the school paper drifted from stupid, gossip stories to in memoriam lists of the boys who went to war before they should have, and died, being sent out as cannon fodder.

The relationship between Gaunt and Elwood felt fully realised, beginning as almost a teenage crush and romance to something much deeper, borne out of their shared experiences at battle. Gaunt faces the challenge of his German family background, secretly enlisting and being sent out before Ellwood is to know. Their relationship is followed throughout the period of war, and the taboo subject of their relationship is touched on also. I loved the way the pacing felt perfectly set up, somehow making slower moments of conversation still intense to the point I finished the book in one sitting.

While also having the boys’ relationship at it’s core, the novel teaches and informs of the tragedies of war, telling the tale of thousands of boy’s who felt a duty to sign up and go to war.

Overall, this was a book I loved, literally trying to get through it as fast as possible as everything held me on edge.

An excellent story of boys growing up in the crucible of the First World War, and the impact it had on them all. It’s left a legacy with me, and I’d strongly recommend it. Gaunt and Ellwood ❤️. I can see why a few of my friends have called it their book of the year.

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

This book needs to be on your reading list for 2023. It is both a tender love story and a devastatingly detailed portrayal of the horrors of WW1.

In Memoriam opened my eyes to the devastation of WW1. Yes I knew the basics from history class, but I wasn’t aware of how young these boys were,some as young as 16, children leading children to their deaths. A whole generation of young men wiped out senselessly, driven to war by a society’s skewed view of what bravery is.

Alice Winn’s writing is sublime, seesawing from a tender love story to visceral visions of war in the turn of a page. The love story between Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood is very real beautifully played out, up their with the best.

An incredibly powerful must read ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of five

This absolutely floored me, what a debut! So brutal but so tender and beautiful too. I had to keep taking breaks while reading as I couldn’t bear the heartache, but I loved it.

Is it ridiculous to think you've read the book of the year in March? It feels too early in the year to make that choice, but I can't imagine loving anything else more than In Memoriam this year. I was utterly swept away by Ellwood and Gaunt – their story feels like one for the ages, etched in me.

This has a surprisingly relentless pace and I was expecting something slower and somehow more melancholic. I wasn't expecting to finish this in a day with white knuckles and sitting on the edge of my sofa. It captured me entirely and I cannot stop recommending it to everyone. Yes, the sadness is there – it's bleak and there's a distinct sense of futility and that ever-present sense of the waste of lives of these young men. There are moments where I felt there were certain characters we didn't get to know enough, that were too thinly drawn and not present enough to get a real sense of. But then, I suppose that's half the point – too many boys lost too soon and who never had a chance to become anything more than boys.

It touches on elitism and the upper classes and a declining class order, the impossibility of the stiff upper lip, and drawing attention to all those flaws, but never feels overly preachy. The trenches are contrasted wonderfully against the quietness of life at Preshute, driven home by the white feathers and the reiteration that nobody at home had a clue how terrible it really was on the front lines.

But in amongst all of that tragedy, there's this ends-of-the-earth style love story between two boys who begin as friends who would do anything for each other. It's beautifully drawn – at once taboo, tender, and utterly triumphant. It's a book about war, but at it's heart, it's a book about love and a phenomenal one at that.

Honestly this is the best book I've read in a while. It's gripping, distressing and full of love and hope despite its subject matter. Its outside my comfort zone as I normally don't read historical fiction but I'm so glad I picked it up. Highly recommend. Thanks to Netgalley, Viking and Alice Winn for the ARC.

A love story between two boys during WWI. Beautiful and touching. It feels like you are reading a classic.

A spectacularly devastating love story that never fails to make me cry. Ellwood and Gaunt will be with me for a long time to come.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of in memoriam.

if i was marketing this book i would perhaps best describe it as atonement meets the song of achilles.

i compare it this way because it had the heartbreaking but beautiful elements of those books wrapped up in one.

this explored every part of war, whether it be the long, unforgiving and heartbreaking things the soldiers experienced, or the short but heart warming moments between them that nobody else could comprehend.

alice winn’s description and writing was very raw and real, as it needed to be when writing about the sort of atrocities ellwood and gaunt experience in this book.

i loved reading how poetic ellwood found life before war, and how this continued even after the war finished and he was struggling with ptsd and shell shock.

i think the relationship winn created between them was something that is difficult to put into words, this sense of unrelenting and unassuming love and devotion.

the ending was heartbreaking as i expected it would be, but also it was in none of the ways you could expect.

in a whole, this was a heartbreaking but beautiful story that depicted the first world war in all of its awful and incomprehensible horror, which could not be understood in the slightest except to those that were there and a part of it, and i really felt like this characters were.

Watch this space, this book is going to be huge. And it deserves to be.

It's the early days of World War I. Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt are friends and sometimes more at Preshute, a prestigious public school. Under pressure due to his German heritage, Gaunt enlists in the war, and Ellwood and their school friends soon follow. This book follows the boys and their relationship during the week war.

I absolutely loved this book. In school, to introduce the topic of World War I poetry, my English teacher showed us the BBC adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front (vastly superior to the Netflix one, sssh) and I became obsessed with it. I had never seen war depicted like that: the utter pointlessness of it, the horror of enlisting with your friends and then watching them all die, the disconnect between what people thought the war was and the brutal reality. Reading this book was a comparable experience. It absolutely does not hold back on the violence and horror of war, and its depiction of grief and madness.

Although this will definitely appeal to fans of the "gay and depressing" genre, it completely avoids any kind of sentimentality, so if you think the premise sounds trite, don't worry. Ellwood and Gaunt aren't #couplegoals, they're absolutely awful to each other. Which brings me on to the thing that makes this not just a great book but a brilliant one: the tone. The author perfectly captures the stuck-up, stiff upper lip public school boy mentality that feels so authentic to the period. Gallows humour abounds, especially in the darkest moments. All to say: this book kind of traumatised me, but also made me snort with laughter. I'll never think about Adam Bede the same way again.

Wholeheartedly, enthusiastically recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley who provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for this advanced copy.

I have nothing to complaint. This is such a devastating story with beautiful writing style. Also the story setting in WW1... It was such a great idea.

Alice Winn has created a wonderful love story set against the horrors of war, with enough confidence to not shy away from the hell of the trenches and the emotional trauma on the soldiers. It adds to, rather than out-does, the body of fiction that deals with WW1 (Regeneration, All Quiet) or queer love struggling to find itself (Tin Man), but nonetheless this is a haunting and engaging book that deserves the praise it gets.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

What an amazing and simply devastating novel. I hardly know where to start with summarising it! The book takes a lot of inspiration from real accounts and sources of the war, and it definitely felt real and horrendous and alive with emotion the whole way through. The two main characters, Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt, go to a privileged boys’ boarding school together before the war, where they are too shy to tell each other that they love one another, but as war breaks out their idyllic life there is interrupted, and Henry enlists after a plea from his family, despite hating the entire concept of the war. To begin with, Ellwood, the romantic and idealistic of the two, is the more enamoured with the idea of fighting for his country and being heroic, but stays in school, until Gaunt’s letters home induce him to follow. He finds Gaunt changed and also furious with him for coming to France. For a while they are together at the front, until the battle of Loos, and then we follow separate strands as the war progresses and intensifies. Throughout there are extracts from the school paper listing the dead, a reminder of the sobering quantities that were killed and wounded - an entire generation wiped out almost entirely.

My thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin Viking for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.