Less Dreadful With Every Step by Clive Woolliscroft

 Less Dreadful With Every Step

 by Clive Woolliscroft

Less Dreadful With Every Step by Clive Woolliscroft was published on 28th May 2023 by The Book Guild. My thanks to the author and the publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Random Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour.

Synopsis

In August 1914, the lives of two young people seem mapped out in front of them. Frank, happily employed as a bank teller, is to marry his fiancée in the spring. Emily is also to marry around the same time. Both are natives of Jarrow. Their homes are about a ten-minute walk away – but they have never met.

Then, everything changes. Carried along with the jingoistic national celebration that follows the declaration of war, Frank enlists in the army, leaving his family and fiancée behind. Shortly after this, a devastating loss leaves a massive void in Emily’s life. To help fill that void, she volunteers with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

By the end of summer 1916, both Frank and Emily are serving in France. Their lives intersect twice, once in France and once in Jarrow. After they meet, the destiny for one is tragedy, and for the other, hope.

My Review

This is the story of Frank and Emily whose lives become intertwined due to the horrors of World War 1. The war is brought to life through the eyes of these two young people who meet in different circumstances , both in Etaples and in Jarrow.

I personally found this an extremely harrowing read, especially in the closing chapters of the book and it stirred up, quite rightly, many emotions of horror, anger, sadness and at the end hope.

Clive has told this story in depth  and has not spared any punches in describing what certain aspects of the war were like for those who were thrust into the middle of the horror. The story is incredibly well written  and the narratives flows easily between the lives of Emily and Frank and through the difficult aspects that we encounter.

For me this book, which even though it is fiction, is a complete narrative of what happened during this horrendous waste of life and destruction. There are certain aspects that I cannot come to terms with as to how our soldiers were treated and Clive is right to write these into his book so that we do not forget the sacrifices that were made my so many for our todays.

About the Author

Now more than halfway through his eighth decade, Clive Woolliscroft is retired and lives in Cheshire with his wife, Sue, and Cocker Spaniel, Bonnie.

Before retiring, Clive followed a variety of careers. He was an Army Officer in Germany, an International Money Market Trader in London, a Management Consultant in Prague and Riga, and a Solicitor in London, Hertfordshire and Staffordshire.

Ever since Clive was commissioned to write a book to demystify the derivative financial products that emerged in the 1980s, his ambition has been to write a novel. That ambition has taken more than thirty-five years to achieve. 

The actual catalyst for the creation of Less Dreadful With Every Step was a visit made by Clive to his local churchyard searching for dead ancestors in pursuit of his hobby—genealogy—when he noticed a headstone remembering a young man ‘... lost in France in the Great War about 23 March 1918’. Clive researched the young man in question to discover that, whilst he was a native of Jarrow, he never once set foot in Cheshire. The seeds of the book were sown.