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Flanders

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What we have in "Flanders" is one of the greatest yet most obscure novels of the 1990s - a sales flop that not only received universal critical praise, but inspires strange passion in practically everyone who reads it. And it should be the next book you read.

Patricia Anthony is not only one of the best writers in contemporary fiction, but perhaps the most courageous. While her previous works stretched the boundaries of "science fiction," "Flanders" departs the genre entirely. This bold new direction left her publishing house sputtering in confusion, with frustrating results for everyone. Flanders represents an author with a secure genre career abandoning that security to follow her own path.

Here we have one of the great books of the past decade, yet because it was not marketed in any meaningful way, almost no one knows it even exists. I discovered it by accident, rummaging through new books at the library. I took it home, opened it up, and it promptly squashed me like a tater bug on the front grill of a Peterbuilt. In the months since, I have enjoyed steering other people to the book and waiting for their reaction: everyone I know who has read the book comes out of the experience not only in love with it, but moved by it. This is a life-changing book, a cult classic in the making. If it is possible for a book - abandoned by a confused and indifferent publishing industry - to take on a life of its own, then this is the book that will do it.

I cannot say this strongly enough: Read this book. Now.

Rarely have I come across a novel which so vividly portrays the brutal experience of trench warfare and the Great War. The never ending rotation from rest area to reserve trenches to front line and back again, with longer and longer periods spent at the front; of life lived in the trenches, surrounded not only by ceaseless imminent death, but by decay and disease, destruction and deep-set rot. The ways humanity finds to adapt and survive whilst living through such an experience, and how the infinite damage done by war is measued in even more than the millions of dead, as if they were not enough. It is also the damage of those who returned, the shell-shocked, the maimed and disfigured; the ones who returned physically whole, but altered, would never be the same again, who must learn to live once again in `normal' society, such a seemingly impossible task. The damage done to the earth herself, dug out, bombed and devastated, who swallowed all the bodies and blood and despair in her own collasping trenches.

There is also the hope, the friendships, likes and dislikes, the petty arguments, personal hatreds, prejudice, comradeship, laughter and sorrow and all other things so very human in these totally inhuman surroundings. Whislt the entire novel is set in Flanders during 1916, Anthony still manages to depict very well one of the true tragedies of war, the dislocation and isolation of the soldier, the manner in which such an experience makes it impossible for them to ever really fit back into society once again. Of knowing that even if they make it through the war alive, they are still going to have to live with it for the rest of their lives. After all, these were men and boys coming from relatively `normal' lives, and then they were handed a gun, taught to kill and told it was alright to be murderers for four years. To walk straight back into the old life afterwards was never going to be so simple.

That is perhaps one of the most powerful themes to this novel; the manner in which human beings can become accustomed to brutality and violence, how it becomes a way of life until they find themselves capable of murder and rape and savage cruelty. And the painful ironies of war; some bittersweet, such as Riddell, surrounded by the worst excesses of wartime death and destruction, in tears when learning of the natural death of his age-old mother; others just bitter, such as the combined fates of Miller and Leblanc (although I will not into more detail, for fear of spoiling the story.) "Half of my friends were murdered, sir" is all Stanhope can say when, in amongst the deaths of millions, the near justified murder of one individual soldier who had not been able to draw that increasingly blurry line between killing the Germans and killing anybody else, is singled out and prosecuted for all its worth, with terrible repercussions for all around.

Most of all, however, this is a book about hope. About redemption, and salvation. Finally, it's about forgiveness. Forgiving the enemy, who are not neccesarily the Germans - for after all, the Germans have done nothing except fight the same war and experience the same tragedies - but forgiving those around you, even those who seem mightily unforgivable. Mostly, it's just about forgiving yourself. There is a peace to be found in Anthony's novel of wartime destruction, a novel about human tragedy, filled with very human characters. A novel which is brilliantly haunting and achingly sad and still, in the end, so ultimately hopeful. "It's love."

In 1916, Texan Travis Lee Stanhope could have had anything. Harvard wanted the brilliant young man, who overcame child abuse. So what was this budding scholar doing in the trenches of Flanders during World War I. Like many of his fellow Americans, Travis has joined the British army seeking adventure. What he has gotten is a mud hole filled with death and disease that he now calls home.

Every dawn, Travis ventures into no-man's land between his side and the Germans to kill off some of his enemy. However, the battlefield and the endless bottles of rum are taking their toll on Travis' psyche. In life, Travis feels dead; but in his dreams, he feels alive. Ghosts begin to appear as Travis seems to have the uncanny ability to glimpse at an afterlife or perhaps he has just gone insane.

FLANDERS is the best war story in several years, may be decades. The story line graphically portrays the horror of war, especially the battles in the trenches during World War I. Travis, who journeys to salvation within his mind, is a great character because he provides the audience with a TV screen to the horrors of FLANDERS Field. Once again, the incredibly talented Patricia Anthony demonstrates why she is one of the top authors of the nineties with a classic war novel that one day will rank with the great war tales of the century.

Harriet Klausner

Flanders is an excellent novel about an American soldier in World War I. Travis Lee Stanhope, a Texas farmboy and Harvard pre-med graduate, volunteered for duty on the British side because he wanted to see the world and have some adventures before settling down back in Texas. He thought the war would be exciting, something he could brag about to friends and family. His experiences in the trenched soon changed his mind. He began to see war as a nightmare, where his friends died without warning and without reason, and where his survival depended on ignoring his own humanity.

The living conditions at the front were execrable. The trenches they lived in were filled with mud and sewage. Rats thrived in the death-filled environment, eating dead bodies and nibbling on the living ones, too. The soldiers slept in niches carved into the sides of the trenches and sometimes these caves collapsed under artillery fire, burying the soldier alive. The food was bad and so was the water. The survivors learned to ignore the conditions, making jokes about the rats and food and shaking the hand of a corpse buried in the wall for good luck. Reading about these conditions makes the reader very grateful not to have to live like that.

Anthony describes the trench warfare as mostly anxious waiting as artillery fire pounded all around. At night, the officers would lead their troops over the top, into a No Man's Land filled with shell crates and bodies, trying to get into the enemies trenches. Even when the soldiers did get into the other side's trenches, hand-to-hand combat against seasoned German troops was difficult, and mostly deadly. Stanhope became a sniper, and his experience was even more intense as he stayed out in No Man's Land throughout the days, picking off Germans who became visible. This type of fighting was not effective, as no land changed hands permanently throughout Stanhope's career.

The author really did an excellent job of portraying the horrors of World War I. Her descriptions match up with material in history books, but are much more vivid. While you should not depend on this book to learn all there is about the Great War, it is very good at letting the reader know what it was like for the soldiers in the trenches.

This book is almost impossible to stop reading. Anthony gets you hooked early and never lets go. The hero, Travis Lee, reveals more and more of himself and his past in his letters to his brother, and he transforms through his experiences. The best part of the book is the plotline of Travis Lee's past being revealed, and the worst part are the too-true depictions of violence and life in the trenches. You need a strong stomach for parts of this book, but you never want to put it down. The ending will take your breath away.

I finished Flanders today and, quite simply, was moved by the novel from start to finish. I've been a fan of Patricia Anthony ever since I first read Cold Allies a number of years ago, but now I must admit that Flanders has made me more than a fan -- call me an awe struck Patricia Anthony worshipper from now on. So wonderful, this book. So beautiful.

It was touted as "the war to end all wars"! Young Texan Travis Lee Stanhope has volunteered to join a British regiment in the spring of 1916 for "a piece of adventure," he says. He soon re-defines his own idealism and discovers that instead of "acts of nobility" that "war is hell." Patricia Anthony in her novel "Flanders" vividly recounts this tragedy with a poetic sense of style--and justice. The storyline depends upon a series of letters that Travis Lee writes to his younger brother, still at home in Harper, Texas. A crack sharpshooter, Travis tries to be assimilated into the ranks of his British comrades (despite the differences in the common language!) who have found themselves in the trenches in Flanders. He soon recognizes the sheer horror, depravity, uselessness, and stupidity of this war and experiences booze, unleashed sexual appetite, and even ritual violence. As the war is a tragedy (isn't there tragedy is all wars!), Anthony seems to have captured the essence of this one, from the muddy, bloody trenches themselves to the relationships between the soldiers, who seem to come in every shape and form. As war itself is disquieting, so in "Flanders." It is not an easy book to read, nor to digest; it is a book that is not easy to forget. Anthony's poetry loving (and reciting) Texan-among-the-Brits in far off Flanders fields is also one character that's memorable.(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

This novel is powerfully moving, illustrating clearly the utter madness and dehumanising effects of total war. Men are torn to pieces by shell fire, laced with rifle and machine gun bullets, gassed or are ravaged by disease in a novel that calmly records these horrors. The effects of such an environment on one young man fighting the Great War is played out in this novel through the letters home of a young Texan fighting in the British army in 1916. Through the hellish landscape of Flanders, Patricia Anthony has produced one of the most powerful war novels of all time. Bleak and emotionally scarring, like the conflict it portrays, this is certain to become a classic of the genre. Despite the horrors, this novel is profoundly spiritual in content and reflects the twisted and shifting social and moral mores of young men in a conflict they barely understood. Without a doubt the best novel I read in 1999.

This was a powerful and triumphant novel of the First World War. Travis Lee Stanhope, an American soldier fighting for the British in France, eloquently tells the story. We suffer with him not only as he fights the war against the Germans, but also as he fights an internal war against the ghosts that haunt him. Travis fights loneliness, alcoholism, homophobia and anti-Semitism.

There are all kinds of nastiness in this novel. It is gory and realistic. Some scenes are as horrifying as you could imagine. But ultimately, this was one of the most sensitive and moving novels I have ever read. Recently I have read some excellent war novels (The Black Flower, Fields of Fire, among others). This was as good as (if not better than) any of them. Highly recommended, do NOT miss this one.

I bought the book because I am interested in the First World War. I was not prepared for what I encountered within the moving story of a young man at war with the enemy, his friends, and his mind. I broke down more than once and I was truly sorry that the story had to end the way it did. Very reminicient of Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front." BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I picked this book up at the library just because it had an intriguing cover -- what serendipity! I am neither a sci-fi fan, nor a fan of war novels, but as others have said, this book is really about redemption and the human soul. I found myself so caught up in Travis' world that it was hard to tear myself away. I read the book mainly during lunch hours, and found myself having to suppress my tears so that other people wouldn't see me weeping over these intensely human characters. This is the first book by Ms. Anthony I have read, but I certainly intend to read the rest of them. This is also the first time I have been so moved by a book by a living author that I felt I should write the author -- and I intend to!