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I'm probably being too soft-hearted and sympathetic, but I find it hard to judge Vera Brittain. It seems to me that the grief of those senseless deaths one after the other, the ongoing stresses of the nursing she did, and then the expectation of her parents that she should stop what she was doing and go and look after them, would be too much for most people to bear.
She probably was a bit hard to take, but I think she was suffering from post traumatic stress for several years after the war. The attitude of her Somerville classmates reminded me a bit of people who say that someone who suffers great injury or loss should "just get over it", without any real conception of how hard that is.
I know the book made me feel once again that my life has been incredibly lucky and placid compared to the horrors that she and so many others have lived through. I suppose I feel that because I haven't been tested, I don't know how well I could stand up to repeated blows like those she endured.
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