My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

February 21, 2011
Singular in quality, if not unique in plot or tone, Young's WWI novel, her adult debut after coauthoring the Lionboy YA trilogy, follows two emblematic couples: Peter and Julia Locke, lovely and well-placed until their relationship disintegrates under the pressure of war and changing conventions, and, more centrally, working class Riley and posh Nadine, who, in a nice bit of symmetry, are hampered before the war by the very upper crustiness that the Lockes embody, but are subsequently more free to love each other and better suited by their modernity and openness to survive. Still, separation and a terrible injury ensure uncertainty and tension. The plot has a certain Atonement feel to it—working-class boy is semiadopted by upper-middle-class family and educated beyond his station, then falls unacceptably in love with their independent-minded daughter and goes to war while she becomes a nurse—but the similarities become increasingly irrelevant as Young's characters come into their own and easily shoulder the burden of escorting readers through an unsensationalized and thoughtful story of English class, world war, and that universal constant—love.

In crisply enunciated tones, Dan Stevens narrates this love story of two couples from different classes as they navigate life during WWI. Working-class Riley Purefoy, educated above his station, falls in love with the posh, artistic Nadine Waveney. The other couple appears when Purefoy meets Peter Locke in France when both enlist, Locke having left his wife, Julia, with his cousin, Rose. Stevens delivers the details of war and life at home with a relentlessness that echoes the bombing, gunfire, and death of war. The action moves from Ypres and Paris to London and the surrounding countryside without pause or respite. Listeners will be drawn into a story of hope, love, and life after the couple's world is torn apart by war. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine