Customer Reviews

Testament of Youth (Penguin Classics)

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I first read this book when I was not much younger than Vera Brittain was when she "viewed the outbreak of the First World War as an interruption of her plans", and I was immediately touched by her experiences. I have read (and re-read & re-read) this book many times. While I am not of the same social class that she was, I can relate to her desire to make something of her life, first through a university education (then restricted to many women) and later through finding meaningful work. (This is something that we all seek.) She fell happily in love, only to lose first her fiance, then her two male friends, and finally her beloved only brother in the carnage of the First World War. Her experiences as a V.A.D. (Volunary Aide Detachment) nurse in the war--from describing what the wards were like, to the frenzy she faced during a "push", to watching the Americans arrive in 1917, to her life on the hospital ship "Britannic", that's right, the sister ship to "Titanic"--both went down, are unforgettable. When she writes, she does not spare herself, nor seek to make herself look good--and she takes an unflinching look at her own difficulties (a word which does not even begin to describe it!!) adjusting to a post-war world which did not want the survivors. She tells of the difficulties she had fitting in (again, but this time older & wisher) at Oxford, of her mental near-breakdown, and of the bright light that was Winifred Holtby. I cannot recommend this book enough. It should be required reading in colleges and universities, and not just for history, English, and womens' studies majors. Perhaps those who do not understand what all the fuss over "women's lib." is all about should make this required reading as well (both male and female). She is the first feminist role model for me, and inspired me to learn as much as I could about current events AND history (so much so that I majored in history in college, with a concentration in modern Europe). This book is well worth your time and effort, and will probably send you to the nearest library or bookstore to hunt for more books on this era. It is also rare because most of the books written about the First World War are written by men (Sassoon, Graves, etc.), so this is unique in that it tells of the impact of the war from a woman's perspective. History tends to forget that women as well as men have experienced war. Brittain writes both from the view of those back home in Britain (when she is on leave) and from the view of someone at the front, cleaning up the wreckage (as a volunteer nurse). If you are wondering what happens to her, she wrote a "sequel" of sorts titled "Testament of Experience", which chronicles the years 1933-1950. "Testament of Youth" is a wonderful book, one which you will read again and again, and all the more moving because it is a true story.

Never have I read a better account of current events interupting the normal rituals of young adulthood and changing the destiny of a group of individuals so dramatically. This book so captures the dreams and longings of people coming of age and finding themselves in terms of careers and loves and then having the rug pulled from under them that it could stand as a testimony for all generations shattered by war. In sometimes heartbreaking and often very poetic language the writer takes you along on a journey of discovery under horrific conditions and the reader is made to understand the remarkable transformations that these young people go through. The fact that the book was written by a young woman and is one of the few war memoirs that reflect a feminine sensibility and perspective serves to make this a unique book in the literature of either World War. Required reading for anyone interested in 20th century history.

This book by Vera Brittain is one of the most moving that I have read. Written as an account of the experiences of young men and women at the onset and during the First World War, it gives a particular insight which is different from, but equally absorbing as, those accounts, so often understated, of soldiers who fought in the trenches during the conflict. To be more accurate, while she recounts the feelings and experiences of the men who were closest to her, hers is the only woman's viewpoint which is given in any depth - and, indeed, it is her personal account, given in such depth that it draws in and involves the reader in a way unlike any simple factual account of events. While it recounts in some detail her own work as a nurse in the war theatres, it is a story with as much muted romanticism as those of the Brontes or Jane Austen, and belies to a degree the orthodoxy of Vera Brittain's feminism. This is a book to be recommended without hesitation, for anyone interested in the period, but also as a timeless account of human endeavour, endurance and love.

This book changed my life. I first read it as a young woman, and I have never stopped reading it since. Vera Brittain became one of my first female role models. She made World War I come alive for me; her courage, her unflinching honesty, her integrity and her humor in the face of the horrors of the Great War shine through in her autobiography. Vera Brittain taught me that a woman can lose her faith, her family, her friends and her love and yet not lose herself. Her life was an act of hope and belief in humanity.

This is the only book that upon finishing, I turned back to the
first page and started reading again. I am currently reading it
for the fifth time. It is a unique story by one who suffered a
most unbelievable tragedy. It is also a picture ot the world just
prior to the cataclysm of 1914, duirng and after. It is actually
a book in three parts. Part 1 deals with the role and status of
English women prior to 1914. Part 2 details the 1st World War
tragedy from a woman's perspective. Vera Brittain lost her fiancee,
brother and the only two other male friends she had. Part 3
details how she regained a life after the war and how she
became involved in English political and social issues. She was
a most remarkable woman and in my opinion not given the credit
she truly deserves. "Testament of Youth" is the most incredible,
unique masterpiece imaginable.

The word "classic" gets thrown around a lot these days. Many so-called "modern classics" are not that important, but "Testament of Youth" deserves this reprint as a Penguin Classic. Brittain tells of her early life in the north of England between 1893 and the start of World War I in 1914 in beautifully clear prose, and her clarity of thought and powers of observation make the bulk of the book, dealing with the war's impact on her, painfully vivid without ever lapsing into self-pity. Like too many others of her generation (and the next and the next) Vera Brittain learned almost unimaginable lessons about life and her own inner strength. To that extent, "Testament of Youth" can serve as both example and inspiration.

Vera Brittain came from an upper-middle-class background shared by millions of young women in late Victorian England. One thing that made her different was her great intellectual curiosity and determination to escape a truly suffocating existence that few of today's Western women can easily imagine. What made her like most citizens of the time (and of later times)was her complete ignorance of the meaning of "war." Patriotism, her social conscience, and a desire to take part in the bigger world led her to volunteer as a nursing sister with the British Army. Her grueling hospital experiences were a revelation to her. Her personal losses are even more powerfully revealing of the human condition. Brittain was a "survivor" in every sense of the word.

"Testament of Youth" is just as fresh and moving today as it was when it was written 75 years ago and Vera Brittain tells a story that must be told and retold to each generation. For every reader who finds the book "too long" by current standards (its almost 700 pages), there will be two who wish they could follow the author even further. But even if you find yourself skipping ahead, particularly in the early part, you will not be able to forget Vera Brittain or her story. "Testament of Youth" is one of the great autobiographies of the past 100 years.

Vera Brittain used diamond-hard sentences to relate the transitions of her life. Within a span of just a few years she went from being a pampered middle-class girl to being an unwanted female student at Oxford (women in those years were given no credit towards a degree for the academic work they did) to nursing shattered victims of war in field hospitals. The final transition, perhaps the cruelest of all, was her return to Oxford to find that women only a few years younger than she thought her struggles and suffering (the death of every male friend/lover/sibling) a joke.

Testament of Youth was first given to me by a British pen pal. I read it, loaned it, lost it. I could never find another copy, which is why I looked here. It should be a movie. It is as classic and powerful a war memoir as Red Badge of Courage. The ghastly trenches of World War I were never more alive than in Testament of Youth, which might seem amazing, given that the author is herself far removed from the war. That, to my mind, is the genius and the beauty of the book -- it conveys like no other the terrible lifelong pain and tragedy caused by war for those who lose their loved ones. Vera Brittain never got over it, and you will never be able to forget her grief and strength if you read this wonderful book, which few Americans seem to be acquainted with.

Cheryl Campbell's reading of Testament of Youth is one of the most gripping audiobooks I've ever encountered (and I've heard quite a few). Despite it's six-hour length, I've listened to it three times. Campbell's interpretation is pitch-perfect as the voice of a girl from a provincial, upper-middle-class English family who sees her world changed forever by the cataclysmic events of the First World War. Brittan's quiet and deliberate style makes the horrors she has to tell speak for themselves. Spend six hours with Campbell, and you'll understand our troubled century as never before.

Vera Brittain enrolled in Summerville College, Oxford, in a time before degrees were granted to women. This was just before The First World War changed almost everything for almost everyone. When it was over, her best friends, her fiance and her brother had all been killed. She also personally witnessed the agony of thousands in the surgical wards where she worked as a volunteer nurse.

In response, she became a suffragette, a feminist and a liberal writer and lecturer. She sought to prevent such tragedy from reoccurring.

The answers to the political and social questions with which she struggled elude us still. But Vera Brittain's autobiographical account of her generation's trials, Testament of Youth, remains both a stunningly-honest portrait of a courageous young woman and a vivid chronicle of a time almost out of living memory. Through her words we see what we might have thought, felt and believed, had we been born into her era.