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"The Return of the Soldier" is Rebecca West's 1918 novel of the struggle of a WWI veteran, Chris Baldry, who is shell-shocked with amnesia, to return home and make sense of the life that he had before he went to war, a life that now he can't entirely remember. This dramatic novel shows with great heart, that the horrors of war are not always left on the battlefield.

"An authentic masterpiece." — The North American Review Returning to his stately English home from the chaos of World War I, a shell-shocked officer finds that he has left much of his memory in the front's muddy trenches. The three women who love him best anxiously await his arrival: the thoughtful and intuitive cousin who narrates the story, the lovely wife he cannot recognize, and the woman with whom he shared a summer romance 15 years ago. Rebecca West's novel depicts neither battles nor battlefields. This remarkable tale takes a searching look at the far-reaching effects of the first modern war on a sheltered society. The Return of the Soldier effectively and memorably captures the spirit of England in the throes of unwelcome change. It is a penetrating view of the nation's shifting class structures and offers a sensitive portrayal of individuals torn between nostalgia for their irretrievable past and acceptance of their conflicted present.

"Come here; Jenny. I'm going to dry my hair." And when I looked again I saw that her golden hair was all about her shoulders and that she wore over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked so like a girl on a magazine cover that one expected to find a large "15 cents" somewhere attached to her person. She had taken Nanny's big basket-chair from its place by the high-chair; and was pushing it over to the middle window. "I always come in here when Emery has washed my hair. It's the sunniest room in the house. I wish Chris wouldn't have it kept as a nursery when there's no chance—" She sat down; swept her hair over the back of the chair into the sunlight; and held out to me her tortoiseshell hair-brush. "Give it a brush now and then; like a good soul; but be careful. Tortoise snaps so!"

The Return of the Soldier recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and sheds light on their fraught relationships. The successful treatment of the traumatised returned soldier is a fundamental element of The Return of the Soldier. Unlike Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Dorothy L. Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, this novel lends certain optimism that the soldier can be reintegrated into society. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1982.Excerpt:"That day its beauty was an affront to me, because, like most Englishwomen of my time, I was wishing for the return of a soldier. Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my Cousin Christopher from the wars and seal him in this green pleasantness his wife and I now looked upon. Of late I had had bad dreams about him. By nights I saw Chris running across the brown rottenness of No-Man's-Land…"

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca WestThe Return of the Soldier is the debut novel of English novelist Rebecca West. The novel recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his female cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and optimistically suggests that psychoanalysis might offer a simple cure to the trauma. Though initially reviewed by critics, literary scholars treating West's work tended to focus on her later novels and dismiss The Return of the Soldier until the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first. Plot: The novel begins as the narrator, Jenny, describes her cousin by marriage Kitty Baldry pining in the abandoned nursery where her dead first son would have been raised. Occupied with the domestic management of the Baldry estate just outside London, the two are almost completely removed from the horrors of war. The only exception is that Kitty's husband, Chris Baldry, is a British soldier fighting in France. While Kitty laments in the nursery, Margaret Grey arrives at the estate bringing news to the two women. When Jenny and Kitty meet her, they are surprised to find a drab middle-aged woman. And even more to their shock, Margaret tells them that the War Office notified her of Chris's injury and return home, not Kitty and Jenny. Kitty dismisses Margaret from the estate trying to deny that she could have been the recipient of such information. Soon after, another of Jenny's cousins notifies the two women that he in fact has visited Chris and that he is obsessing over Margaret, whom he had had a summer fling with 15 years before. Soon after, Chris returns shell-shocked to the estate believing he is still 20, but finding himself in a strange world whic

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How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca WestThe Return of the Soldier is the debut novel of English novelist Rebecca West. The novel recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his female cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and optimistically suggests that psychoanalysis might offer a simple cure to the trauma. Though initially reviewed by critics, literary scholars treating West's work tended to focus on her later novels and dismiss The Return of the Soldier until the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first. Plot: The novel begins as the narrator, Jenny, describes her cousin by marriage Kitty Baldry pining in the abandoned nursery where her dead first son would have been raised. Occupied with the domestic management of the Baldry estate just outside London, the two are almost completely removed from the horrors of war. The only exception is that Kitty's husband, Chris Baldry, is a British soldier fighting in France. While Kitty laments in the nursery, Margaret Grey arrives at the estate bringing news to the two women. When Jenny and Kitty meet her, they are surprised to find a drab middle-aged woman. And even more to their shock, Margaret tells them that the War Office notified her of Chris's injury and return home, not Kitty and Jenny. Kitty dismisses Margaret from the estate trying to deny that she could have been the recipient of such information. Soon after, another of Jenny's cousins notifies the two women that he in fact has visited Chris and that he is obsessing over Margaret, whom he had had a summer fling with 15 years before. Soon after, Chris returns shell-shocked to the estate believing he is still 20, but finding himself in a strange world which had aged 15 years beyond his memory. Trying to understand what is real for Chris, Jenny asks Chris to explain what he feels to be true. Chris tells her the story of a romantic summer on Monkey Island, where Chris at the age of 20 fell in love with Margaret, the inn-keeper's daughter. The summer ends with a rash departure by Chris in a fit of jealousy.

Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983), known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Her novel "The Return of the Soldier" is a noted modernist World War I novel. Other works include the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, "The Fountain Overflows," "This Real Night," and "Cousin Rosamund." Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947.

"The Return of the Soldier" is Rebecca West's 1918 novel of the struggle of a WWI veteran, Chris Baldry, who is shell-shocked with amnesia, to return home and make sense of the life that he had before he went to war, a life that now he can't entirely remember. This dramatic novel shows with great heart, that the horrors of war are not always left on the battlefield.

The Return of the Soldier is Rebecca West's 1918 novel of the struggle of a World War I veteran, Chris Baldry, who is shell-shocked with amnesia, to return home and make sense of the life that he had before he went to war, a life that now he can't entirely remember. This dramatic novel shows with great heart, that the horrors of war are not always left on the battlefield.