The Heroes’ Welcome
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The Heroes’ Welcome
Buy Now for £14.64
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Narrated by:
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Dan Stevens
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By:
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Louisa Young
Summary
The Heroes’ Welcome is the incandescent sequel to the bestselling R&J pick My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. Its evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of WW1 will capture and beguile readers fresh to Louisa Young’s wonderful writing, and those previously enthralled by the stories of Nadine and Riley, Rose, Peter and Julia.
LONDON, APRIL 1919.
THE GREAT WAR HAS ENDED.
In a flurry of spring blossom, childhood sweethearts Nadine Waverney and Rilery Purefoy are married. Those who have survived the war are, in a way, home. But Riley is wounded and disfigured; normality seems incomprehensible, and love unfathomable. Honeymooning in a battered, liberated Europe, they long for a marriage made of love and passion rather than dependence and pity.
At Locke Hill in Kent, Riley’s former CO Major Peter Locke is obsessed by Homer. His hysterical wife, Julia, and the young son they barely know attempt to navigate family life, but are confounded by the ghosts and memories of Peter’s war. Despite all this, there is the glimmer of a real future in the distance: Rose Locke, Peter’s cousin and Riley’s former nurse, finds that independence might be hers for the taking, after all.
For those who fought, those who healed and those who stayed behind, 1919 is a year of accepting realities, holding to hope and reaching after new beginnings.
The Heroes’ Welcome is a brave and brilliant evocation of a time deeply wounded by the pain of war. It is as devastating as it is inspiring.
Critic reviews
Praise for THE HEROES’ WELCOME:
‘Fierce and tender, The Heroes' Welcome depicts heroism on the grand scale and the importance of the tiniest act of courage’ Observer
‘Young possesses in abundance emotional conviction, pace and imaginative energy, and these qualities will draw readers with her through time and space, as she unfolds the story of the Lockes and Purefoys on their journey through the 20th century’ Guardian
‘If you read one novel about the effects of the First World War this year, make it this one. It has brain with its brawn and deserves a hero’s welcome’ The Times
‘A moving exploration of the war’s toll on a generation…deeply affecting’ Metro
‘A brilliant, passionate, intense examination of what it is to survive a war and to negotiate a peace with a body and mind that have been irrevocably altered’ Elizabeth Buchan
Praise for MY DEAR I WANTED TO TELL YOU:
‘This novel is a triumph’
Elizabeth Jane Howard
‘Every once in a while comes a novel that generates its own success, simply by being loved.’
The Times
‘Birdsong for the new millennium’
Tatler
‘Powerful, sometimes shocking, boldly conceived, it fixes on war’s lingering trauma to show how people adapt – or not – and is irradiated by anger and pity’
The Sunday Times
‘[A] tender, elegiac novel. Others have been here before, of course, from Sebastian Faulks to Pat Barker, but Young belongs in their company’
Mail on Sunday
Fabulous sequel!
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Where does The Heroes' Welcome rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
so delighted to find this sequel to My Dear I wanted to tell you. Beautifully read by Dan Stevens and his characterisations are superb Louisa Young's insights into the thoughts of her characters are wonderfully scripted and you become so embroiled in each person's persona.Which scene did you most enjoy?
The end was very satisfying and completed the stories well. However Louisa if you want to write another follow up please do!Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Absolutely and carried it around with me all the time.exquisitely written and beautifully read
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Tenderly written sequel
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Having read both I would suggest a new reader reads them in sequence. I doubt the reader would get full understanding of book 2 without having read book 1.
While book 1 dealt with the characters as they went through the 'Great War’, book 2 deals with how they negotiate the peace afterwards. This novel moves from 1919 to ten years later.
We see up close and personal how the ‘peace’ is a very fluid thing and while some outwardly achieve it others never do.
While during the war the conflict was external the ‘peace’ moves it internally. The cost of the war goes on in the lives and hearts of those who survived it.
Riley has huge facial injury and while he carries the horrors of war externally, within him he manages to live in and absorb the peace.
His superior Peter is outwardly intact in body but internally bereft with huge emotional and psychological damage.
The ‘peace’ after the intensity of the war is longed for by all the characters yet each one has been scarred.
The story shows their attempts again heroic for some and fruitless for others to come to terms with it all and move forward.
While this book explores the negative effects of war in its aftermath it also shows a changing world where women can achieve something more than going back to mundane lives with no prospects as we can see with Rose’s life path.
The language is beautiful and captures the characters desire and overwhelming wish to love and be loved yet feel that they do not have a right to such love, having survived while others perished. I loved how the story went forward and the ending was very poignant.
The narrative by Dan Stevens was wonderful and I would highly recommend it.
Heartbreakingly brillant
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A book that you don't really put down.
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