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Jul 22, 2017tjdickey rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
The dead should be heard – or as Simon Tolkein puts it, the dead should not be buried in lies. “No Man’s Land” is a powerful evocation of Edwardian England largely from the ground level, almost an anti-“Downton Abbey.” His heroes are coal miners struggling to survive life in the Pit, socialist organizers fighting class warfare, unsung infantrymen in the trenches and fields of the Somme and a few tragically sympathetic officers, destitute mothers and widows, pastors driven mad by the overabundance of shallow graves to dig. This is an emotional read, an finely-wrought and epic tale of the attempt to remain human in the face of de-humanization on a massive and industrial scale.