The Road Back: A Novel
By: Erich Maria Remarque / Narrated By: Graham Halstead
Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
History is written by the Victors, but War is lived and survived by those who lived it, who died it
I was miiiighty touchy from the get-go when I first considered purchasing The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque. Sure sure sure, All Quiet on the Western Front was bloody brilliant and devastating but dude! it had Frank Muller as the outSTANding narrator. And here? Graham Halstead. And he soooo does NOT have the vocal chops that Muller does. I know, I wasn’t giving him a chance cuz, really, his pitch seems not to convey the same gravitas.
I was initially… dismayed is a nice and polite term for the: Oh crap, I’m in for 11 hours of this sorta mental BS.
And BS it most certainly is; I admit it; I firmly call it upon myself. But then I surrendered to the story, surrendered to the stunning writing, surrendered to the ugly truth of survivors finding their physical and psychological devastation counts for nothing.
While not technically a sequel, this has entirely different characters, it most assuredly can be termed as a successor to its illustrious predecessor. Ernst and his fellow soldiers are clinging to life at the Front, hoping they survive the horror show that continues to unfold around them. Think there aren’t going to be battles in this story? Think again as Remarque’s writing skillfully and mercilessly grinds ink onto paper (Words into Spoken here?), showing the reader/listener how brutal, how ugly just hoping for a single second more in this Life is for those who’ve lived for yeeeears in percussive mayhem, lived for yeeeears with gore and vaporized comrades.
But they have survived, and the Armistice sends them… Home… It’s not even so much as Can they return, heads held high Without Victory, but How can they Live, knowing what they now know, Wanting so desperately to be Whole again. Alas, what they return to is just… NOT. Period. People at Home want the returning soldiers to know just how much THEY suffered, that perhaps it was easier at the Front as opposed to scrounging and living amongst the shortages that still remain. And then too, they’re told how wonderful it is for them that they’ve at least been living glorious lives of valor. This is said by teachers, and ranking officials who plotted and strategized and threw men after scores of men into the devastating battles, never setting foot upon the Front’s soils themselves.
Ernst and his band of brothers feel scathing fury, and now? They don’t feel the need to be silent. Going back to school to finish where they left off, they lounge disrespectfully at their much-too-small desks, insouciantly answering names at Roll Call with a: He’s dead, died at Ypres, or a: He’s in an asylum, he’s insane. When the schoolmasters try to shame them or bring them to order, all they get from these damaged men are hoots of derision.
The Road Back is a testament to what soldiers come back to, to a wary navigation through lives lived alongside those who are naive, those who remain untouched by war, who have silly or pedantic opinions that they do NOT keep to themselves. Ernst and his fellows realize that their entire generation, once so hopeful, has been completely destroyed, cast off, counting for nothing. They ask themselves if all (Or Any) of it was worth it; and the answer is a resounding: No, NONE of it was worth it, but how do they live each day now?
And how does Graham Halstead do? Well, if not bloody brilliant, he at the very least doesn’t hinder the flow the emotional impact this DEVastating novel has. I know, that makes it seem that I’m totally all lukewarm about his performance, but actually I’m of the opinion that, ultimately, he does a fine job. This novel has an intensity to it, and it resonates on an exTRAOrdinarily emotional level, and Halstead manages it all. Plus, he effortlessly seems to capture each of the characters’s personalities so that I was never in doubt as to who was speaking. So forgive my initial knee-jerk hesitation, Mr. Halstead, sir—I do apologize for my early quibbles.
By all means, listen to this. It should be compulsory reading/Listening, especially as we breeze in and out of countries, leaving volunteers to make the sacrifices and then leaving them high and dry with but Veterans Day and Memorial Day to acknowledge them. As a whole society, we should think more about when, why, we go to war. Not gonna step on a soapbox here, just gonna say that, oh LORD, we humans have a lot to answer for.
Can’t recommend this highly enough; just prepare for the many, MANY slugs to the gut…
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