Published by Scribner
Publication date: June 12, 2018
Last week I started this little feature for books that don’t quite fit in the normal summer reading mold. This week’s pick is still a quiet character study, but about a devastating time in history.
I have read many, many novels about World War II, but very few about World War I. That, plus a level of ignorance that feels embarrassing means I didn’t know that in 1916 almost one million men were casualties on the fields of Verdun, France. Nick Dybuk revisits the time and place in his new novel, The Verdun Affair, a story about two men and a woman for whom what happened in Verdun connects them not just in 1920, but again in 1950. For each, it’s something different—for Tom, bringing dignity to the dead; Sarah is searching for her husband, and Paul, an Austrian journalist, is looks for justice. When a soldier with amnesia appears in Italy their stories come together.
Tom is an American working with a church in Verdun that helps refugees and those looking for lost loved ones. He goes out each day as a bone collector—gathering up the unidentified bones of the dead and placing them in a memorial shrine. At the church he meets Sarah, a woman searching for her husband. She is certain that he is still alive. They have a brief affair until she learns of the soldier in Italy and leaves. When he follows her they meet Paul, a journalist who was formerly an Austrian soldier, who has his own reasons for interest in the man.
Dybek painfully captures the mayhem of people of many nationalities—parents, girlfriends, and wives—descending on what were the largest killing fields up to that time. Each desperate to learn if any of the living wounded, many of whom are suffering from the psychic aftereffects of mustard gas, are their loved ones. Dybek aligns their stories with precision even as their lives move apart, right up until the United States in 1950 when Tom and Paul see each other again. While each knows only a part of the other’s story, Dybek tells the reader all, even though there is no neat conclusion to the novel.
Unlike The Garden Party last week, which was a more lighthearted look at human nature, The Verdun Affair is heavier, carrying the weight of death and loss. But it does so with a stately sorrow that doesn’t sink the novel. Scanning or skimming won’t work—Dybek’s words are too carefully chosen and need attention. This is not pool or beach reading, it’s a book for the porch or under a tree’s shade—quiet spaces for contemplative reading.
Beautiful review, Catherine. I have to admit that this is a book I hadn’t even considered. As much as I like WWII books I always seem to avoid WWI books. What’s with that? This sounds like one I might enjoy. Maybe in the fall on a cold rainy day!
I have recently stumbled into WWI and it is a different kind of horror. The fact that Verdun was planned by the Germans as a war of attrition where no thought or care was given to the men fighting is appalling. So many stories to be told. I’m kind of hooked now!
Oooh, that does sound like a good one. I also haven’t read as much about World War I – I think that’s pretty common given the recent outpouring of books set in WWII.
Well, also factoring in the Holocaust means every other war pales in comparison to the evil done there. Still, it’s a different kind of evil with its own stories. I’m on a WWI kick in my fiction now!
Thx for your review! Yes I had seen this novel around & was intrigued by it since it coincided with my trip to northern France & seeing WWI & WWII sites. We did not get to Verdun but I’m still interested in the novel and glad you liked it enough. I have read 2 WWI novels lately Pat Barker’s Regeneration and Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong (this one for 2nd time from long ago) … from all i’ve read it seems like the worst of all wars if that is even possible. I’m still assessing why & how the war started & went on & on.
Me, too! From school all I remember is an archduke being assassinated which basically turned out to be an excuse for Germany to try and expand its ’empire’ the way the British had. A horrible, brutal war for nothing more than a power hungry man’s grab for land. I’m still learning more!