The cover says this is a novel; its brevity and spareness put it in another category I don't have a name for. Interesting and at times quite evocative, this is the story of five young French men from a small town in western France who go to the front. I learned something interesting about body lice here (a plus), but was a little bored by a description of phantom limb pain. (This has featured in so many novels that it's difficult to write something new about it; obviously for the sufferers it's important.) Impossible to feel anything for the characters in this skim-the-surface treatment, but excellent writing.
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