But the sections back in this country are agonisingly slow. The wartime scenes are well realised, although a little meandering. There are two halves to the narrative: the passages set in the trenches and a later time when the character is trying to readjust to normal life, with little success. But not enough seemed to be done with the idea. The writing was certainly good, and where the passages handled strong emotion it was very affecting. This was an idea spread too thin with not enough plot and or originality. It is on a par with Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and that's about the highest praise I can dish out. I'm always a bit suspicious of much hyped novels but this one far exceeded my expectation. The author plays throughout with the themes of friendship, fear, guilt, loss and love & at times it reads like a stream of fevered unconscious thought. The narrative moves seamlessly backwards and forwards from the wild, unfettered Cornish coast - a metaphor for their lost youth perhaps - to the fewer passages in the sinking mud and stench of the trenches in Daniel's fevered mind. The novel begins with Daniel having returned from the war tortured by what happened to Frederick who appears in the opening passages as a mud encrusted inhabitant of his friends sub-conscious mind.

The boys have been best friends from an early age despite their differing social standing. Frederick and Felicia are middle class siblings with Daniel being the son of their family cleaner. The three main characters have known each other since childhood and have grown up in an isolated Cornish coastal village. And the love theme is but one strand and it mostly just simmers under the surface of the story and remains ambiguous to the very end.

It's far more complex and layered than that involving a triangle of people who all love each other in such different ways. It's been marketed by the line 'Can love survive the war?' but this is no simple love story. This is a beautifully written tale about the sacrifices of the WW1 generation.

The Lie by Helen Dunmore