“While The Lie may be the first literary reimagining of the First World War in this centenary year, it will undoubtedly prove one of the most subtle and enduring,” writes an enchanted Stephanie Merritt in the Observer. Written with a “poet’s feeling for language”, Helen Dunmore’s latest novel is a “quiet tragedy”. It depicts the troubled return home of a shell-shocked young soldier, Daniel, to “a village full of absences and the news his mother is dead.” Merritt praises the author for offering “glimpses of hope and redemption, even as the inevitable consequences of Daniel’s life begin to close in on him.”
“Dunmore’s is a very good novel. 2014 is a very good year to read it”, writes John Sutherland in the Times as the political row over the memory of the war escalates. The author’s “imagination and research” shines through, particularly in its “vivid”, first-person flashbacks to the “horrors of the trenches”. She teases out the tensions of class and sexuality, with Daniel and a soon-to-die officer realising “in the mud, blood and filth of the trenches, that they’re not just pals.” Sutherland’s only criticism is that Dunmore was not there – “The best novels about the conflict are by those who spilt blood.”
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