A soldier, shell-shocked in the trenches of WWI, has lost all memory of the previous fifteen years, leaving him with idyllic memories of young love with an innkeeper's daughter. His arrogant upper-crust wife is a complete stranger, and a cousin (who relates the story) he remembers only as a child. A potential cure means he faces the memory of all the horrors of the front. Is this a real cure or is he better off sick? Even the doctor sees no urgency for change.

The opening chapter filled with upper class horror of anything below them almost put me off reading this book. A woman is noticed approaching the house and Kitty (the soldier's wife) is horrified - ugh, she is badly dressed, ugly, not one of us, don't open the door… That attitude prevails. While the wife is painted as saintly, the other woman, her clothing, her umbrella, is cruelly disparaged.

West's descriptions of nature are lengthy and beautiful, but of necessity character development is minimal as she focuses in on the small group. It is unfortunate that the author used outrageous class prejudice to highlight the tragedy, evidently unable to to recognize that it would be just as devastating in any circumstances. The result is overly romantic but as the author was aged 24 when she wrote this, her first novel, in 1918, maybe it is understandable. ( )

This is the story of a soldier during WWI who returns home shell-shocked. He can't remember the last 15 years of his life, including the marriage to his wife. He does remember a summer "love" and the two meet frequently in the garden, the wife begrudgingly agreeing that it might bring back Chris' memory. It doesn't and the wife grows more bitter. Not only is this about the horror of the Great War, it is the story of brutal class warfare. The author writes very lyrically. It was a very slow moving book. Favorite quote, "She isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you see her." 140 pages ( )

What a haunting novella this is and one in which the title takes on a completely different meaning as the story progresses. There is so much depth to this story. It can be seen as a treatise on what war does to those who fight it and those who await their return, a tale about the degrees of love people experience and the sacrifices they are willing (or unwilling) to make for the good of one another, or a tragedy about the irrevocable loss of youth and innocence and the longing of the soul to recapture that time.

It has often been said that no man returns from a war unchanged, and this is all too true, but Chris Baldry has found the one way to avoid that fate, and that is to wipe the war and the fifteen years that preceded it from his mind. In this state of regression, we are allowed to see the different faces of love and loss in Chris’ life--the wife who seems to love the idea of a perfect husband rather than the man himself, the cousin who loves the man but finds there is much about him that she does not know or understand, and the love of his youth who loves him purely and unconditionally.

Perhaps it is the experience of the war that enables Chris to see beyond the surface and the material and recognize the value of the loving, though less glamorous, Margaret. He has, after all, just come from the devastation and death of the battlefield. For our narrator, the cousin Jenny, who is still under the sway of the opulence of the things they own and the mansion they live in, it takes a while to see beyond Margaret’s ugly yellow coat and frumpy housewife demeanor and into the open heart that embraces this man for his soul, offering him peace through her presence. Chris’ wife, the cold and elegant Kitty, learns nothing from Margaret. In the end, she represents the rules of society--the ones that demand we marry a person of equal status and pretend to a perfect life, and the ones that send young men off to the horrors of war.

I do not generally like to give away any plot elements when I review a book, but I found this review impossible to write without including perhaps too much of its content. For such a short book, it carries a strong message and delivers it with beautifully structured sentences, brilliant descriptions, and forceful writing. I have no doubt that I will be thinking about it for some time.
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Está novela ejemplificó por primera vez en la época los dramáticos efectos psicológicos de un conflicto bélico tanto en los soldados como en sus familias, a la vez que trazaba un tenso y apasionante retrato del sacrificio, el arrepentimiento y la brutalidad de la guerra. ( )

Upper class man, Chris Baldry, becomes a Captain in the British Army and goes off to fight in the trenches of World War I. Something happens, we never know what, but it leaves him with no physical injuries but a total loss of memory of the last fifteen years. His aristocratic wife Kitty and his cousin Jenny only learn of his condition when Mrs. Grey, a lower class woman appears at their doorstep to let them know that she has received letters from Captain Baldry who's been writing from a hospital. This comes as a surprise which they dismiss as a vile attempt to get money rather than the ugly truth. Eventually they realize Mrs. Grey had once been Margaret Allington and the Chris Baldry had fallen in love with her fifteen years ago but the class difference was too much. Captain Baldry comes home only to not recognize his wife or the home which they together had altered in many ways. He could only see the house as it as before and desperately wanted to see his true love Margaret Allington.

Great set up but how does this get worked out. Eventually to humor Chris they invite Mrs. Grey to return since she is the only person he wants to be with. The rejected wife sulks in the background while Margaret and Chris rekindle their feelings. By coincidence both had lost a young son. Eventually Mrs. Grey realizes it's up to her to break it to Chris and uses the deceased son's clothing as evidence. This raises the question whose "happiness" is more important. Chris was blissfully happy believing that it's still fifteen years in the past and nothing has happened since. By bringing him into the present it's the return of the soldier, much less happy and possibly even needing to return to the war. His wife is happy.

The upper class rejection of everything below them was too much for me. Yes there's lots of beauty, beautiful house, garden, and clothes. It's the interpersonal rejection which made it impossible for me to like the characters. Fortunately this is a very short book. Not a book I recommend unless one wants to see what was wrong with English society. ( )