The novel not only focuses on what life was like for the soldiers fighting in France, but what it was like for the women left behind. My own father (who sadly died in 2006) grew up in a fatherless household, never knowing his own father. Julia, the 2nd female lead, is problematic, her learned helplessness as the beauteous object of desire seems more schematic idea than real -- so too Rose's asexuality (is she really THAT plain?

He is working class and becomes a type of protegee for Nadine's family - until she has 'inappropriate' feelings for him. Until I was almost half way through this book, I was thinking There's not much point in reading this, as the title says it all. And there are two witchy witchy mothers that would seem monstrously misogynist if written by a man -- Young's gentle touch fails her there.Since in the book we only really get to see what the couples are like once they've fallen in love, I felt like I didn't really get to connect with them. Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, and with problems of their own already, want above all to make promises – but how can they when their future is completely out of their hands? A couple of reviewers here were QUITE put off by a one-paragraph description of gay sex and the occasional use of the "f word. There were parts that were beautifully written but at other times the choppiness of the narrative became hard to take.

De grote oorlog is al meer als 100 jaar geleden en voor mij niet zo bekend als de periode van de tweede wereld oorlog omdat ik daarvan mondelinge getuigenissen hoorde van mijn oma, mama en papa. In the second half, Riley suffers a serious injury which will affect all of the characters in different ways. Set on the Western Front, in London and in Paris, MY DEAR I WANTED TO TELL YOU is a moving and brilliant novel of love, class and sex in wartime, and how war affects those left behind as well as those who fight.One of the most powerful books I've read about WWI: remember the battlefield scenes in "Saving Private Ryan"?

Interestingly enough, the one character that I really connected with was Rose, the nurse who takes care of Riley after he has sustained a bunch of really bad injuries from the war. The writing style and subject matter have some pretensions to the literary, while at other times it behaves more like a genre historical. Of more substance is, arguably the star of the piece, Rose, Peter's cousin who is a practical woman of no great beauty but with a huge sense of practicality.

Youthful passion is on their side, but then their loyalty is tested by terrible injury, and even more so by the necessarily imperfect rehabilitation that follows. Riley’s friendship with Nadine Waveney grows and prospers over the years, until they both come to a realization of love. Riley is sent to Flanders, under the leadership of a vulnerable and increasingly traumatised captain, Peter Locke.

It's a book that will stay with me for a long time and whose characters will live long in the memory. The story frequently focuses on the emotional toll of the war, in the trenches, in the hospitals, in the homes of England. For me personally it was an eye-opener to another world - both of my grandfathers died very young because of that war and I therefore never met either of them.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louise Young poignantly portrays the horror of war, insightfully revealing the effects on men and women, soldiers and medical teams, those at the front and those at home. The first line of this postcard forms the title of the book; the choice between these two categories underpins the plot and is Riley's first lie to Nadine. However, this was an eye-opener to me, about the war itself, societal changes during the war, ethics and mores, and an introduction to Major Harold Gillies, who made outstanding progress in maxillo-facial and plastic surgery during World War I, and later, mostly at Queen's Hospital in Sidcup, England. Another aspect of the book that I really liked is the information about some of the surgeries that were performed during this time. The internal monologues got a bit tedious after a while - long blocks of italicised text as Captain Purefoy and ors debate internally this or that traumatic war-related issue they’re having.