Recent Reading: Strange Meeting by Susan Hill

 

At the start of this beautiful short novel we meet John Hilliard, home in England, on leave from World War One France. He is unable to feel any pleasure in being away from the front as what he has seen and experienced there haunts him and no one in England has the faintest idea about how things on the battlefield actually are.

When he returns to France, he finds that most of the people he knew there before he left for leave have been killed. He discovers that he will be sharing his quarters with a new recruit called David Barton. He is at first a little put out by this development. However, Barton it turns out has the gift of lightening everyone's spirits. Furthermore, he and John form an extraordinarily warm and loving friendship, despite being very different in upbringing and personality.

Susan Hill creates these characters and all the others around them skilfully and provides a vivid and gripping picture of life in the trenches. She makes it very clear thanks to her brilliant descriptive power, that the war both young men are caught up in is little more than a meat grinder for the youth of Europe.

The book is very moving indeed. Hill's imagination is extraordinary and her skill as a writer is superb