An Oldie But a Goodie

Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull (2000)

I can't say enough about this book, only that everyone should read it. This is a novel about love and loss, youth and old age, war and peace, and everything in between.

Patrick Delaney is an 81 year old World War I vet in a nursing home in California. He is old and dying, and he's none too ready to "go gentle into that good night." The novel takes the form of Patrick's diary as he muses over his aging body and looks back on his life - at the nightmare of the War, at the loss of his best friend, Daniel, in the War, and at the brief love affair he had ten years after the war with Daniel's grieving lover, Julia.

Hull's descriptions of the War are breathtakingly realistic, and Patrick is one of the most charming, humorous, and unflinchingly honest narrators you'll ever find in fiction.

Losing Julia can be found in the Fiction section of Chicopee Public Library.