Earlier this year, I read Rebecca Makkai's
The Great Believers about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. Through a secondary plot, she drew a great parallel to the men that were lost in the AIDS crisis to the men lost in World War I. That, coupled with the current pandemic had me returning to stories of World War I. As such, I am currently immersed in Vera Brittain's
Testament of Youth.
As college students flood back into my town, I cannot help but see the first lines of Brittain's book ringing true again to a generation of young people having their lives interrupted by a global health crisis:
Quote:
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“When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.”
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