Kipling's Choice

Kipling's Choice by Geert Spillebeen.
Boston : Graphia, 2005.
147 p. ; 19 cm.

This is a fine little novel about WWI. The plot centers around Rudyard Kipling's son, John and his yearning to be a soldier in the "Great War." The plot moves in and out of John's memories as he lies dying on a battlefield in Loos, France after being mortally wounded on his first day of combat.

His father is an uber-patriotic Englishman and, of course, the world famous Nobel Prize winning author. The story is in many ways a story of romantic ideals of war and patriotism crushed by the barbarity and grief of actual warfare.

John's remains are never found and this loss, the grievous toll of the war, and his own role in promoting war and his son's participation in it leave Rudyard a broken man.

This book would make a great companion read to Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.