A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War [Paperback]

Laurie Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1994 | ISBN-10: 1565841735 | ISBN-13: 978-1565841734

In December 1937, young Laurie Lee crossed the Pyrenees into Spain as a wartime volunteer from England, and in so doing walked straight into the bitter winter of the Spanish Civil War. In this gripping memoir, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, he returns to the scene of his wartime coming of age and portrays the death of a young man's idealism with sincerity and a total lack of pretense.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For anyone who wants to understand what war is actually like, when it is not being dramatized, hyped, heroized, or propagandized, this is the book. For those who still cherish the beauty and the flexibility of the English language this book. . . [is] a treasure. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

This enormously sophisticated work, a testament to the morality and weakness of humanity, has the plainness of Orwell but the metaphorical soaring of a poem. . . An extraordinary book. -- New York Times Book Review

From The Washington Post

A poetic memoir. . . [that] catches something of the horror of war.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (May 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565841735
• ISBN-13: 978-1565841734
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spare, vivid, unsentimental memoir of Spanish Civil War, July 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Paperback)

Laurie Lee's spare, unsentimental memoir of his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War should take a place, I think, with Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as one of the English language classics of the time. Moved by idealistic sympathy for the Republican cause, Lee begins with his winter's journey by foot across the Pyrenees only to be taken as facist infiltrator and thrown into an underground pit-prison with a soon to executed deserter. Eventually allowed to join the International Brigade, he continues to tell a story of disillusionment: "I imagined a shoulder-to-shoulder brotherhood, a brave camaraderie joined in one purpose, not the fragmentation of national groups scattered around the courtyard talking wanly only to each other. Indeed they seemed to share a mutual air of unease and watchfulness, of distrust and even dislike." Yet A Moment of War is not sour story. Its prose evokes awareness heightened by danger and deprivation. Of a humble bowl of bean soup Lee writes, "Bean soup hot and chunky, with an interesting admixture of tar, but to me a gluttonous reward after almost two weeks of near famine in the cave. I remembered again the concentration of the senses, of smell and flavor, that hunger brings to appetite, and with each steaming spoonful I was also aware of the grime of the unscrubbed table, the rusting metal of the soup plate, the sharp frozen landscape outside, almost the fatness of each bean." Of a chance reencounter with a Spanish girl who smells of "fresh mushrooms and tampled thyme, woodsmoke and burning orange," he recalls the heady, sensual magic of being young, the "rare and magnetic driving patterns of youth, cutting across the humdrum chaos of the multitudes." The real story, however, is one of war told from a soldier's viewpoint, long delays and boredom interspersed with seemingly random episodes of violence, as vivid as any soldier's tale ever written. A Moment of War was a refreshing discovery for this media-burdened, hype-wearied reader. I am now searching for more of Laurie Lee's not well enough known titles

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moment of Luck, February 23, 2003

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Paperback)

I do not know much else about the author, Larie Lee, but in "A Moment of War" he certainly led a charmed life. Those who have studied the Spanish Civil War know that the level of hatred, distrust, brutality, and revenge was excessive in this conflict. Indeed, they mirrored that of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia which, not coincidently, exemplify the two main factions in this civil war.

Right from the beginning the author steps into the middle of this tension. He is held in suspicion by the very side he has come to fight for. The "in and out of favor" status that he holds gives this book an even greater flavor of the conflict he writes of.

The book is brief, in part because the authors's tenure in Spain was brief. However, through his experiences and observations, we are able to understand much about this microcism of Twentieth Century European politics. It is a memoir written with a poetic style which allows the author to say so much in so few pages. As an account of the Spanish Civil War, it ranks up there with Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fiction masquerading as fact, but lovely, October 30, 2006

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Paperback)

Laurie Lee was one of the finest English stylists of the 20th century, and his three slim books of memoirs are a joy to read. A joy and a danger, because it is doubtful whether they are mostly memoir or mostly invention.

This defect is, perhaps, of small consequence in the first volumes, 'Cider with Rosie' and 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning,' since they purport to tell of the private and inner life of a country boy. 'A Moment of War' is another matter.

It pretends to be a history of a small part of the Spanish Civil War, a still-contentious conflict. That the moment never actually passed, or not in a fashion very much the way Lee tells it, muddies an already murky history.

It would have been more honest -- although not in Lee's character -- had he presented his memoirs as Siegfried Sassoon did in 'Tne Memoirs of George Sherston,' as fiction that we are expected to absorb as emotional truth, even if not every event really occurred.

That said, Lee's memoirs are delightful to read -- if read as fiction. 'A Moment of War' is considerably less delightful as to subject, though Lee's sensuous prose remains a joy to anyone who loves language.

'Cider with Rosie' has been, by far, the most popular of the three volumes and probably has the greatest value as a record of a thousand-year way of secluded village life that came to an end when Lee was in his early teens.

That it was sexy in a quiet way no doubt had something to do with this, as when it was first printed English publishing was still in its Mrs. Grundy phase.

'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is, to my mind, the best of the three and the one volume that is so personal that it doesn't matter how much of it was invented.

Sassoon's 'Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man,' the first volume of 'Sherston,' is the finest coming of age novel about an English boyhood. 'As I Walked Out' is second best, and a close second.