Experimental coelenterate biology Book

This novel about the experiences of an Irish private during WW1 didn't really engage me until about the half way point when it did massively improve. Firstly, I felt the author bluffed his way a bit through WW1 - sacrificing detail to abstractions, which meant I never quite felt myself in the boots of a private on a WW1 battlefield. And the grandiose biblical (Hemingwayesque) prose style dwarfed the characters for me, turned them into puppets which maybe was clever as what else were all those young men who lost their lives in that daft war? Like Days without End the characters were for me the weakest part of the novel. Again, Barry chooses as his focus a good-natured blank canvas of a character, Willie; again, he tends to idealise and sentimentalise relationships. That said, in the second part of the novel, I did begin to warm to Willie's relationships with his male mentors - his father, his commanding officer, his Sergeant Major and Father Buckley, the chaplain. He also has a sweetheart who inflicts on him a kind of Old Testament punishment for a misdemeanor which shows brilliantly the gulf between her domestic reality and his nightmare frontline reality. As a backdrop, the novel also dramatises the Irish rising for Home Rule. This was nicely done. However, I'm not sure it really added anything to my understanding of WW1 or the Irish problem. Essentially, it's a story about one young man's loyalties and loves with a thunderous historical backdrop - rather like Days Without End in other words.

I enjoyed it, but I don't think it'll live long in my memory.