The Middle Parts of Fortune (Vintage Classics)

More like a diary than novel. The movie 1917 captured only a fragment of the daily activities unfolding in this story

I am impressed all to hell with this work of Frederick Manning . I can only wish He had put out more . Most Excellent .

After WW1 Erich Maria Remarque published his classic anti-war novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" which is admired and respected to this day and has been filmed at least twice.Australian Frederic Manning's novel, published around the same time, tells the tale of horror, devastation, comradeship, and death at least as well yet this work tends to be ignored. We meet an educated young man enlisted as a private in a British infantry regiment and meet his officers and comrades in arms. We share in their lives, fears, and joys as all hell breaks loose around and among them as the story moves towards its tragic conclusion.Strongly recommended and at least as good as Remarque's classic work.

Okay. No great shakes.

Not everybody's cup of tea - WW I warfare up close.

I would recommend this by way of introduction to reading anything about WWI. Fiction is often required when the subject matter is far too dense, fraught and difficult to internalize from non-fiction. We fail to "get" WWI and the facts are that it didn't really end until 1945-6 and the trails at Tokyo, Manila and Nuremberg.

This book mirrors may own experiences in the trenches of Vietnam more than 50 years ago that move me still to reflection and nightmares. My own book tells much the same story with prose far less elegant than Manning's. The language, emotions and sense of helplessness have change very little over time. This was a easy book for me to understand on that account but no less moving.

Books on the Great War don't seem to be in vogue in these days of hi-tech warfare but this author was obviously in the thick of it and tells a good story.This book is a clearly written, no-nonsense account of a slice of life in the trenches. It is not action-packed and yet the author does an excellent job of portraying the day-to-day strife, worries, cares and laughs of the average "tommy" in an engaging and interesting manner. The story opens immediately after an attack during the Somme campaign and ends after an attack at Ancre. In between the reader follows the life of one Private Bourne and some of his companions as they survive in their own fashion during life on the Western front. Mr. Manning does an excellent job of drawing the reader unsuspectingly into the atmosphere and the lives of these soldiers to the point that the climax of the book hits the reader like the proverbial bullet.

I was required to read this for university, in a module where books about and around the war were quite frequent. I didn't know what to expect from this, having not realised that Manning had published under two titles (Her Privates We) until later on, so researching it proved difficult initially.I think Mannings writing is wonderful really, it feels true to what he is trying to portray but it's engaging and quite often poetic in its description. Bourne is a very interesting soldier who deems to show you the life in the trenches through his intelligent eyes. There are no rose tinted glasses when it comes to these characters and events though. The soldiers conditions are put out there for all to see and they swear, quite frequently whilst giving their honest opinions. It is clear to see why Manning had to release a more censored version but I think that takes away the interesting spark in Mannings creation.The narrative moves at a nice pace and you feel for the characters. What I loved about it was that it wasn't too heavy, the politics of war etc were present but only ever underlined the main story and it wasn't just mindless war imagery either. It's an emotional account of a collection of soldiers who put their lives on the line, with the occasional chance at sharing laughs. I recommend reading it, I was very surprised by the novel myself. Although I think this one has the edge over Her Privates We, but that's more a personal choice!As for the kindle side of things, I only really noticed a couple of typos and its formatted okay too. Although for some reason there are a lot of gaps, they occur between most short passages. It doesn't spoil the reading but you'll find it strange at first!Anyway, I hope I made some sort of impression amongst the rambling! Enjoy :)

Excellent book, highly recommended. Tells the story of day to day life in the trenches, in a matter of fact way, from the viewpoint of a British Tommy. No poetry, no stiff upper lip! And, considering it was written in the 1920s, quite graphic.Some reviewers have stated the text of this book is difficult to read. I found that not to be the case. Surprised it is free on Kindle.Probably the best war novel I’ve read.

Though the kindle version is not well-adapted as there are line breaks on every page, this cannot detract from a superb novel. I've read all the most celebrated WW1 novels from Britain, France and Germany, and March's triumph is the best. It is understated, does not exxagerate the message, hits the right tone in spoken exchanges and delivers a subtle read. I cannot rate it highly enough.

I had to stop reading through sheer frustration at the way the text is presented on the page. The prose is presented so that you read a,sentence which stretches across the page, then the next line has one word on it & then it drops a line to another sentence below. There are hundreds if hyphens splitting words between lines. I have to assume this is something to do with adapting it for reading online. Utterly frustrating & a total waste of money. Don't buy this online, buy it hardcopy. From the little I have managed to read I think it is probably really good

Great. This is the uncensored version, with all the foul words left in. There is no criticism of the war as such. It's as much about the mundane life away from the front line as about the killing field of battle. I did not notice any sentimentality in the book. The hero's friends are killed - suddenly.The war in this book is trivial boredom punctuated by sudden, random, unsentimentalised death.