I have had a copy of this book for a long time and finally decided to read it. Part of my reluctance knowing that this wasn't going to be "light holiday reading" 
 I liked the sparse almost detached narration - I dont know I would have wanted to read this in first person as some of the trenches scenes were pretty horrific. I also liked Elizabeth's side story - her intrigue about the war echoing my own realisations about how little I know about WW1. The scene which sticks with me is when she goes to France and sees the monuments to the lost: 
 "There is an arch supported by four vast columns. Etched over hundreds and hundreds of yards of stone, furlongs of stone, there are names: 
 "Who are these, these? The men who died in this battle?" 
 "No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in the cemeteries." 
 "These are just the ... the unfound." When she could speak again. From the whole war?" 
 The man shook his head. "Just these fields." 
 Elizabeth sat on the steps. "No one told me. My God no one told me," 
 Stephen's story is heartbreaking - the man who has an illicit love affair at the beginning of the novel is unrecognisable as the same man at the end of the novel. 
 Horrifying but compelling.