The Officers' Ward [Paperback]

Marc Dugain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

It is autumn 1914, the first days of the Great War. At a hospital on the outskirts of Paris in a room without mirrors, a young lieutenant lies scarred, his face forever disfigured by a German shell. But he is not alone. Between bouts of surgery, he discovers that hope, humanity and humor can endure even there in the officers' ward.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This remarkable first novel, a prizewinner in the author's native France, ushers the reader back to the devastating days of World War I. Dugain evokes time, place, and character with light but indelible brushstrokes, visualizing, as briefly as a dream but as resonantly as a memory, the horrible atmosphere within the French hospitals used for depositing the grievously wounded coming in from the front. Before the outbreak of war, Lieutenant Fournier was a railway engineer who had begun a new job in Paris only months before his induction. No sooner was he dispatched to the front than he was seriously wounded while on a reconnaissance mission. Fournier is taken by ambulance back to Paris, where he spends the remaining years of the war in a ward reserved for officers. He must now cope with the fact that a large portion of his face is gone and--despite attempted surgical corrections--gone forever. Dugain's significant debut, then, is not a war novel about trenches and strategy but one about disfigurement and the psychological as well as physical pain associated with "getting back into the swing of normal life." This tough but elegant novel need not have been a single page longer, for in its brevity, it speaks volumes about survival in wartime. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Dugain marches his small truths over these brief pages to a sense of the inevitable, the finest fiction's Grail." --John Rolfe Gardiner

"[A] powerful fictional document, a work that celebrates its characters' unspoken inner strength and the curious bonds of their friendship." --The New York Times Book Review
-- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569473072
• ISBN-13: 978-1569473078
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,350,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic first novel, November 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Hardcover)

Based on the experiences of his grandfather in WWI, Marc Dugain writes beautifully about a hospital ward of soldiers recovering--if that can be done--from severe facial injuries. The Officers Ward is a powerful account of what it means to go to war and to have oneself disfigured and, perhaps, left literally speechless. The characters make the reader uncomfortable and make each other uncomfortable, as the story explores what men can and cannot share with each other. These soldiers, including the main character Adrien Fournier, talk of their own pain and of women and of the men still in the trenches. This story is especially powerful because the men who fought WWI are largely gone--it's a history that cannot be lost to new generations. Now that it's available in paperback, I'm doubly recommending this short novel to friends.

If you're interested in short novels, you might also consider Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine, a story about a Japanese-American family during WWII. Other good, short novels include Bill Grattan's Ghost Runners (think baseball), Jane Smiley's Ordinary Love & Good Will (think Midwest), Neal Bowers' Loose Ends (think Tennessee funeral), and Helen Humphreys' Afterimage (think 19th-century photographer).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Tragic (well-written) World War I Novel, March 1, 2002

By 

Billy J. Hobbs "Bill Hobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Hardcover)

Perhaps the tragedies, the horrors, and the heroics of World War I have been
chronicled over and over, but perhaps, still, not often enough. In Marc Dugain's first
novel "The Officers' Ward," the French-born author has furnished yet another story (and
lesson) from the "War to end all Wars."

To say it was "the worst of times" would be an understatement and young
Lieutenant Adrien Fournier finds himself an early casualty of the German onslaught. He's
devastatingly wounded--much of his face is blown away--and he's transported to Paris to
await recovery and rehabilation for the rest of the war, some five years or so. A bright
young man (an engineer by education), and handsome, he must now face a future
grotesquely disfigured and to a whole where self pity, even repulsion, await him. He
forms a long-standing bond with three others who've suffered similar injuries. It is a time
for them all to come to grips with their own mortality.

But Fournier is no lightweight and sets about facing his own destiny. His time in
hospital--in a special ward for soldiers with such facial injuries--serves as the basis of his
own positive perception of the world to come. It's not an easy ride for him.

The general idea for this story comes from Dugain's own grandfather, himself a
veteran of The Great War. "The Officers' Ward" was honored with France's Prix des
Libraires, and was on the short-list for the Grand Prix of the Académie Française.
Dugain's power of description and episode is a depressingly tragic view of such a
senseless war, yet these tragic elements are somehow overshadowed by the hope and the
will of the human spirit to rise above the personal pitfalls and to function positively within
the confines of a civilized society. But most importantly it is within the confines of his own
self-image that Lieutenant Fournier prevails. Dugain deserves his accolades.
(...)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a rare treasure, February 28, 2002

By 

Toby J. Galinkin (chapel hill, n.c. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Officer's Ward (Hardcover)

every once in a while, a book pops up that really succeeds in almost every way imaginable...that is, capturing the imagination, feeling empathy with/for the characters and then simply getting so involved with the story that nothing else exists except the written word...The Officers'Ward is one of these jewels...the lovely thing about it is that it may be read in one sitting and even though the story is quite tragic, there is a certain slant of optimism that keeps the story alive. a simple, elegant story...i highly recommend.