The Officers' Ward

Marc Dugain

This one came to me highly recommended but it failed to register more than a ho-hum. Most of the action takes place in a WWI hospital for Soldiers with hideous facial injuries and is narrated by Adrien. Except for a single trip to town to scare the local whores, Adrien and his fellow patients are trapped in the bubble of the hospital for the duration of the war.

At the end of the war the men are patched up and discharged and the novel limps to a conclusion. Adrien and friends are not ostracised as they had feared but live out fairly normal lives and even marry (presumably the shortage of men in 1920s France was such that "must have own face" was not a prerequisite in a marriage partner).

Right at the end of the story there is a holocaust angle and suddenly we are racing through WWII in the space of about five pages. It had the unmistakable feeling of an afterthought.