The Heroes' Welcome

De: Louisa Young

Narrado por: Dan Stevens

The Heroes' Welcome is the incandescent sequel to the best-selling R&J pick My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. Its evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of WWI will capture and beguile listeners fresh to Louisa Young's wonderful writing, and those previously enthralled by the stories of Nadine and Riley, Rose, Peter, and Julia.

It's 1919, and Britain is realising that it is no longer at war. Now, Nadine and Riley, Rose, and Peter and Julia, must try to regain a sense of normality. But long shadows cast by the war dim the potential joys of peacetime, and matters of the heart prove arduous and bewildering.

Normality doesn't seem to exist the way it did, and there is no ‘going back' to anything. What must give, for happiness to stand a chance? For those who fought, those who healed, and those left behind, 1919 is a year freighted with perilous beginnings, unavoidable realities, and gleams of indestructible hope.

©2014 Louisa Young (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Reseñas de la Crítica

Praise for My Dear I Wanted to Tell You:

"This novel is a triumph" (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
"Every once in a while comes a novel that generates its own success, simply by being loved." (The Times)
"Birdsong for the new millennium" (Tatler)
"Powerful, sometimes shocking, boldly conceived, it fixes on war's lingering trauma to show how people adapt - or not - and is irradiated by anger and pity" (The Sunday Times)
"[A] tender, elegiac novel. Others have been here before, of course, from Sebastian Faulks to Pat Barker, but Young belongs in their company" (Mail on Sunday)

Disappointing

This book was a big disappointment, falling far short of 'My Dear ...'. It's not possible to write a critique without spoilers, so I will just say that I found some of the things done by some of the characters totally unbelievable. I would have liked more on how the saintly Nadine coped with a husband with a facial deformity, more on Riley's sister's reaction, more on how Riley developed relationships with the children who came into his life. And what of Nadine's Rome connections? Is there a third volume in the offing? These weaknesses overshadowed the aspects of the book which were well done, notably the way Young brings to light the trauma experienced by soldiers and their loved ones - trauma which did not stop after the men returned home. Dan Stevens is, again, simply superb.