Subject: FLANDERS by Patricia Anthony

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 09:21:29 -0400

FLANDERS by Patricia Anthony
            Ace, ISBN 0-441-00528-3, 1998, 384pp, US$23.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper

     In Flanders Field the poppies blow ....

     To Flanders in 1916 comes Travis Lee Stanhope.  He has volunteered
for the British Army, looking for escape and adventure.  What he finds is
hell.  As a Southerner, one suspects he refused to listen to General
Sherman's statement along these lines.  Kim Stanley Robinson summarized it
well in "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations:" 54,000
men who died over a fifteen-year period are remembered on the Vietnam
Memorial.  Imagine one of those for the Triple Entente losses every *six
weeks* of the Western front of World War I, or thirty-five Vietnam
Memorials in all, lined up in a row.  Along the Western front, there were
7500 casualties each day, not in battle, but from sniping; this was called
"wastage."  This is particularly noteworthy, because it is as a sniper
that Stanhope comes to Flanders.

     Stanhope is an outsider: an American in the British Army, a
Southerner constantly called "Yank," a reader of the Romantic poets in a
company of men more interested in more earthly delights, a man blessed (or
cursed) with "second sight."  As such, he finds himself attracted to other
outsiders, and Anthony does a good job of showing us the many faces of the
outsider.

     PUBLISHERS WEEKLY compares this book to Erich Remarque's ALL QUIET ON
THE WESTERN FRONT.  I also saw a lot of parallels between FLANDERS and
Stanley Kubrick's classic film PATHS OF GLORY.  There is the heartlessness
of the distant commanders in their commands.  There is the insular
attitude, the use of the outsider as scapegoat.  What there is more of in
Anthony's novel is the hell of war, a hell that could not be brought to
the screen in the 1950s.  She lays it all out--not just the battles and
sniping and "authorized" killing, but also the disease and the maggots and
the hardening of men's hearts and souls.

     Stanhope tries desperately to hold on to his humanity in all this,
but he finds himself gradually sinking further into not just despair, but
death--the death of his soul.

     Although the fantasy content is on a much more restrained level that
most fantasy novels, it is necessary to the story.  Without it, Anthony
would still have a powerful novel, but a different novel.  As it stands,
though, this will be on my Hugo nomination ballot next year.
     IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
     Between the crosses, row on row,
     That mark our place, and in the sky
     The larks, still bravely singing, fly
     Scarce heard amid the guns below.

     We are the Dead. Short days ago
     We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
     Loved and were loved, and now we lie
     In Flanders fields.

     Take up our quarrel with the foe:
     To you from failing hands we throw
     The torch; be yours to hold it high.
     If ye break faith with us who die
     We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
     In Flanders fields.
                         --JOHN MCCRAE

%T      Flanders
%A      Patricia Anthony
%C      New York
%D      1998
%I      Ace
%O      hardback, US$23.95
%G      ISBN 0-441-00528-3
%P      384pp

Evelyn C. Leeper    |  [email-masked]
+1 732 957 2070     |  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"I am so small I can barely be seen.  How can this great love be inside me?"
"Look at your eyes.  They are small but they see enormous things."  --Rumi