Les Ardents par Alice Winn

This is the book I had been waiting to read for years…..and Alice Winn wrote it.

Alice Winn’s In Memoriam is not just a novel—it’s my emotional earthquake of this early 2025. At its core lies a love story so tender, so fraught with longing and secrecy, that it carved itself into my soul. Set against the atrocious backdrop of World War I, the book masterfully intertwines the horrors of trench warfare with the quiet, devastating tragedy of a love that dare not speak its name; and that’s the story I have dreamed of reading for years!

The relationship between Ellwood and Gaunt, two young soldiers who evolve from English boarding school companions to lifelines in the carnage of battle, is nothing short of luminous. Their bond begins with stolen glances and shared poetry, a fragile intimacy that blooms in the shadows of a world that would condemn them. Winn renders their love with aching precision: the brush of a hand that lingers too long, the letters written in code, the unbearable weight of words left unsaid. In 1914, these boys are sent to die for a country that would never accept their truth, and Winn forces us to feel every excruciating beat of their hearts. It is impossible not to cry

What makes their story so profoundly moving is the duality of their suffering. While artillery shells tear through the earth, Ellwood and Gaunt face another kind of battlefield—one of silence and shame. The pain of hiding their love becomes its own trench, deeper and darker than any they dig at the front. Winn captures the agony of loving someone wholly, yet being forced to fracture that love into fragments: camaraderie here, loyalty there, but never the full, blazing truth. In one searing moment, Gaunt thinks, “To love him openly would be a greater act of courage than charging into gunfire.” It’s a line that seriously hunts me.

Their relationship is a tapestry of small, sacred acts—a shared cigarette in a moment of calm, a whispered name amid chaos, a promise carved into the wall of a dugout. These gestures become lifelines, yet they also underscore the cruel irony of their existence: in a world hellbent on destroying bodies, it’s their hearts that are most wounded. The war’s relentless violence amplifies their desperation to hold onto something pure, even if it must remain unspoken.

Add the visceral horrors of the front—the stench of gangrene, the guttural screams of horses, the numbness of survivor’s guilt—but it’s the emotional battleground that leaves the deepest scars. The most gutting scenes are not of physical carnage, but of Ellwood and Gaunt lying side by side in the dark, trembling with fear and desire, knowing their love is a secret they may take to their graves.

This book is a testament to the countless queer souls who lived—and died—in the shadows of history. Their love is not a subplot; it’s the beating heart of the novel, a defiant flicker of light in an abyss of darkness. When the final pages close, I found myself grieving not just for these characters, but for all the complicated loves that history and war have erased.

This book is more than a war story. It’s a scream into the silence; a soaring tribute to the resilience of the human determination. It reminded me that even in humanity’s bleakest hours, love persists—not always loudly, not always freely, but always.

It couldn’t have been more different to another of first world war book I just finished: Londres by Celine.

I wasn’t prepared to be shattered. But I am ready to watch the motion picture of In Memoriam , with hopefully Harry Styles & Shawn Mendes as Ellwood & Gaunt :)