First of July

August 12, 2013
This well-told, well-plotted war epic from British novelist Speller (The Return of Captain John Emmett) tracks the life experiences of four disparate Allied soldiers fighting in the bloody Battle of the Somme. Jean-Baptiste Mallet is a French blacksmith apprentice who leaves his village for Paris; Benedict Chatto is a talented British music student and organist; Harry Sydenham is a British entrepreneur residing in New York City with his American wife, Marina; and the methodical Frank Stanton is a carpenter and coffin maker in London with an enthusiasm for racing bicycles. Each young man is swept into the First World War’s maelstrom and serves in a different capacity: Frank’s duty as a cyclist messenger is perhaps the most colorful and dangerous. Harry plans to join the American army later in the conflict before he reconsiders and follows his family’s tradition of military service, enlisting as an officer. Benedict is commissioned as an artillery officer, and Jean-Baptiste is an infantry grunt manning the grim frontline trenches on the Somme. He is injured, transported to a field hospital, and spared any direct involvement when the offensive is launched. The four soldiers encounter each other on occasion, while the stark battlefield scenes evoke Hemingwayesque realism in Speller’s unsentimental, always engaging literary war narrative.

October 1, 2013
The catastrophic Battle of the Somme, at the center of World War I, is seen through the eyes of four fighting men whose destinies interconnect, in a sensitive addition to the fiction of the Great War. Although formulaic in structure, British writer Speller's (The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, 2012, etc.) third novel nevertheless offers an affecting account of tragic events. Her four Allied combatants include French blacksmith Jean-Baptiste Mallet; two Englishmen, shopworker and bicycle fanatic Frank Stanton and music student Benedict Chatto; and Brit-turned-American industrialist Harry Sydenham. Opening in 1913, Speller presents conventional panoramas of London, Paris, New York and rural life at a time of strict class boundaries. Jean-Baptiste is a laborer; Stanton is in trade; Chatto has a privileged education; but Harry is the loftiest of them all, a baronet, even though he has run away from his roots to start again in the U.S. Harry's secrets, Benedict's half-acknowledged homosexuality and Jean-Baptiste's betrayal of a suspected spy propel the narrative through the outbreak of war and the men's establishment in differing fighting ranks and roles. And then the great, misconceived battle arrives, a failed attack on an inconceivable scale which drives the men forward to fate, truth, irony and even hope. By foregrounding, with poetic intensity, four individual experiences, Stiller implicitly acknowledges the countless who fought in WWI. A well-crafted tribute.

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Starred review from November 1, 2013

After publishing two well-received mysteries set just after World War I (The Return of Captain John Emmett; The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton), Speller sets her latest work during the war itself, taking the title from the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1914--a day marked by catastrophic losses. The book follows the intersecting lives of four men, three English and one French, from the lead-up to the war until the fateful day of the battle. Speller has written a truly beautiful novel that deals frankly with the horrible realities of war while affirming the perseverance of love and compassion even in the most terrible of circumstances. Each of the four narrative threads is compelling, and the author manages the occasional intersections of the plotlines with a deft hand that keeps those intersections from feeling gimmicky or overly sentimental. VERDICT As unforgettable as Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, this highly recommended title will be savored by historical fiction fans. It deserves a prominent spot in any collection of fiction about the Great War.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2013
Utterly gripping and completely immersing, Speller's historical novel of WWI captures the experience of four very different young men during the war's early years, leading up to one of the grimmest campaigns, the Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916. Elegant writing steeped in atmospheric realism describes a journey undertaken by men with a mistrustful reluctance. The moody, melancholy tone of the novel is signature for Speller, as evidenced in her biography of Emperor Hadrian and her two Laurence Bartram novels. Here we go to war with Jean-Baptiste, a working-class French country boy with a penchant for fishing and a mother unlucky in love; Frank, a working-class Londoner and wartime bicycle messenger; Benedict, whose love of Theo drives his selfless heroism; and Harry, a successful New York businessman with a hidden pedigree. As the war progresses, their stories converge in a pointillist portrait of the trench-riddled landscape and those upon whose frail shoulders the battle depends. Gritty, disturbing, moody, and intensely real, the novel's psychological impact is like those of Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace (2005) and Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke (2007) and asks readers to consider war's high costs. Great book-club fare.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)