Between the Lines

Boyd Cable's Between the Lines is an impressive and realistic first-hand account about the horrors of war. Written entirely in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I, the book provides insight into the cruel and bloody reality of the life of the soldiers, while regularly fragmenting the personal accounts by providing the texts of the official communiqués as well. The author of Grapes of Wrath, Doing Their Bit War Work at Home,and Action Front used the name Boyd Cable as a pseudonym, his real name being Ernest Andrew Ewart. Just like most of his other books, Between the Lines was also written to provide the people back home in Britain an idea of what life as a soldier was really life on the front, the novel being one of the most vivid accounts of these terrible times. The book excels not only in storytelling style, but in structure as well - each chapter uses official news dispatches at the beginning and elaborates on the communiqués by adding personal experiences and stories. The reader is provided a glimpse into the everyday life in the trenches, life in continuous danger and in horrible conditions, life in the threat of getting shot or otherwise injured, facing dangers and hardships very difficult to imagine for those who were not there. The writing in Between the Lines is grim - it cannot be anything else, given the author's endeavor to present the war as it was directly experienced by those who fought it. However, readers looking for a less horrifying account, but one that is not less brilliant and is written by the same master of storytelling, may want to read Boyd Cable's other famous book, Action Front. It is a similarly well-structured account of the war, but one that shows the lighter, sometimes even funny side of life on the front, too.