He is their fallen husbands, their departed brothers and their slain sons and his funeral becomes a way of finally mourning their losses as life around them tries to get back to normal. The soldier serves as a symbol of all the fallen soldiers who failed to return home after the war, and this means that for the people witnessing this journey, this soldier belongs to all of them. Over the five days leading up to the interment of this soldier in Westminster Abbey, Wake follows this journey and its emotional impact on a nation of people trying to carry on living after the War.Īs the soldier’s journey passes from France to England, Hope enlightens her readers to the multitude of emotions stirred by this procession as it passes through French churches and across the British countryside as it travels to London towards its final resting place. The novel opens in November 1920 with three anonymous soldiers on a former French battlefield searching for the one body that would ultimately begin the journey to London to become The Unknown Warrior. Anna Hope’s debut novel Wake is a beautiful, haunting book that stands as a perfect example for why it is more important than ever to remember the devastation that the First World War wrought on this country and its people.
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