In Memoriam

Informationen zum Autor Alice Winn grew up in Paris and was educated in the UK. She has a degree in English literature from Oxford University. She lives in Brooklyn. Klappentext "It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, all of whom are safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. They receive weekly dispatches from The Preshutian, their school newspaper, informing them of older classmates killed or wounded in action. Their heroic deaths only make the war more exciting. Gaunt, half-German, is busy fighting his own private battle- an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the gorgeous, rich, charming Ellwood-not having a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. Meanwhile, Gaunt's German mother and twin sister ask him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from the anti-German attacks they're already facing. 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, fueled by his education in Greek heroics and romantic wartime poetry. Before long, most of their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, the boys become intimately acquainted with the harsh realities of war. Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one other, but their friends are all dying, often in front of them, and no one knows when they'll be next"-- Leseprobe I ONE Ellwood was a prefect, so his room that year was a splendid one, with a window that opened onto a strange outcrop of roof. He was always scrambling around places he shouldn’t. It was Gaunt, however, who truly loved the roof perch. He liked watching boys dipping in and out of Fletcher Hall to pilfer biscuits, prefects swanning across the grass in Court, the organ master coming out of Chapel. It soothed him to see the school functioning without him, and to know that he was above it. Ellwood also liked to sit on the roof. He fashioned his hands into guns and shot at the passers-by. “Bloody Fritz! Got him in the eye! Take that home to the Kaiser!” Gaunt, who had grown up summering in Munich, did not tend to join in these soldier games. Balancing The Preshutian on his knee as he turned the page, Gaunt finished reading the last “In Memoriam.” He had known seven of the nine boys killed. The longest “In Memoriam” was for Clarence Roseveare, the older brother of one of Ellwood’s friends. As to Gaunt’s own friend—and enemy—Cuthbert-Smith, a measly paragraph had sufficed to sum him up. Both boys, The Preshutian assured him, had died gallant deaths. Just like every other Preshute student who had been killed so far in the War. “Pow!” muttered Ellwood beside him. “Auf Wiedersehen!” Gaunt took a long drag of his cigarette and folded up the paper. “They’ve got rather more to say about Roseveare than about Cuthbert-Smith, haven’t they?” Ellwood’s guns turned back to hands. Nimble, long-fingered, ink-stained. “Yes,” he said, patting his hair absentmindedly. It was dark and unruly. He kept it slicked back with wax, but lived in fear of a stray curl coming unfixed and drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself. “Yes, I thought that was a shame.” “Shot in the stomach!” Gaunt’s hand went automatically to his own. He imagined it opened up by a streaking piece of metal. Messy. “Roseveare’s cut up about his brother,” said Ellwood. “They were awfully close, the three Roseveare boys.” “He seemed all right in the dining hall.” “He’s not one to make a fuss,” said Ellwood, frowning. He took Gaunt’s cigarette, scrupulously avoiding touching Gaunt’s hand ...