page_title: Birdsong (novel)
section_title: France 1910
hierarchical_section_title: Birdsong (novel) / Plot / France 1910
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte postale ancienne sans mention d'éditeur &#160;:
context_page_description: Birdsong is a 1993 war novel and family saga by the English author Sebastian Faulks. It is Faulks's fourth novel. The plot follows two main characters living at different times: the first is Stephen Wraysford, a British soldier on the front line in Amiens during the First World War, and the second is his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, whose 1970s plotline follows her attempts to recover an understanding of Stephen's experience of the war.
  Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Most critics found this effort successful, commenting on how the novel, like many other WWI novels, thematically focuses on the way in which the experience of trauma shapes individual psyches. Similarly, because of the parallel narratives WWI and 1970s Britain, the novel explores metahistorical questions about how to document and recover narratives about the past. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, like Ian McEwan's Atonement and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy.
context_section_description: The first stage starts in pre-war Amiens, France. Stephen Wraysford visits and lives with René Azaire, his wife Isabelle and their children. Azaire teaches Stephen about the French textile industry. He witnesses a comfortable middle class life in Northern France alongside industrial worker unrest. Azaire and the significantly younger Isabelle express discontent with their marriage. This sparks Stephen's interest in Isabelle, with whom he soon falls in love. During one incident, Azaire, embarrassed that he and Isabelle cannot have another child, beats her in a jealous rage. Around the same time, Isabelle helps give food to the families of striking workers, stirring rumours that she is having an affair with one of the workers.
  Stephen's love of Isabelle transforms into a passionate affair. Isabelle confronts Azaire with the truth of their relationship and Azaire evicts Stephen. Isabelle leaves with him, running away to Southern France. There she becomes pregnant, and momentarily loses faith in her relationship with Stephen. Without telling Stephen, she flees, returning to her family home and the one constant in her life: her sister Jeanne. Later, Isabelle's father makes a deal with Azaire for her return to maintain her honour; Isabelle is forgiven but soon regrets leaving her true love, Stephen. However, she does not reach back out to Stephen.
caption: A plaza with trolley in pre-War Amiens.
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