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portrait of a loving but increasingly uncertain marriage as Amand gradually begins to get his memory back, causing him to cast doubt on everything that Julienne has told him about their history together.
If there is a criticism to be made of The Remembered Soldier it is that perhaps Daanje could have given a bit more context about Belgium’s status during the first world war and the integral part the country played in slowing down Germany’s advance into France, which subsequently allowed other Allied forces to better arm themselves. But this is a minor quibble for a novel of epic scope that resonates powerfully while wars of tragic loss continue to be fought on multiple fronts, including in Europe.
Daanje exhibits brilliant powers of reconstitution in her descriptions of the war’s aftermath and the blighted landscapes that it left behind. [...] It is virtuoso stuff but also terrifying, as, amid the physical ruins of war, Amand and Julienne gradually have to acknowledge that the harmless |
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| and clumsy man who went away to fight has come back as someone inherently different. |
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