by Susan Hill
about the First World War
. The title of the book is taken from a poem by the First World War poet Wilfred Owen
. The novel was first published by Hamish Hamilton
in 1971 and then by Penguin Books
in 1974.
- John George Glover Hilliard - The protagonist of the novel, John Hillard is a withdrawn character who begins the novel in a military hospital, recovering from a wound to the leg.
“He thought I want to go back for there was nothing for him here”
“Then he thought that he could hear the thudding of the guns. But there were so many noises now, imagined or remembered”
“He tried not to count over all the possible ways in which, after tomorrow, he was going to die”
“She was like the others. Understood nothing”
“He knew that when he left here, he would not be able to believe that it would all continue to exist”
“…pieces of a past belonging to some stranger”
“There is no one that knows. Don’t go”
“He thought, we need him, he has something that none of us have”
“He was almost beside himself in a rush of dread on Barton’s behalf”
“Had seen that Barton has appalled by the sight of Feurvy, as he had not been by the sight of the dead pilot in the crashed plane”