You won’t get more than a page into Alice Winn’s In Memoriam without knowing that heartache is inevitable. The story starts with extracts: first, from The Preshutian, the public-school newspaper of the elite Preshute College, from June 1914; second, from the London Gazette in August 1914, announcing the state of war. The third, again from The Preshutian, takes us to October of that year and lists the students killed in action.

These three extracts set the scene of the novel expertly, while still only brushing the surface. Ellwood is ready to pledge his life to England; Gaunt thinks the war is a disgrace. Ellwood and Gaunt are friends, best friends… and their sexual tension is strong from the get-go. Gaunt suspects he would never have given this tension the light of day if it weren’t for the war – one he wasn’t technically old enough to join, but forced to in light of accusations the Gaunt family were German spies, with a white feather brandished outside of school grounds.

It proves evocative to have this novel begin in a school environment, where boys on the cusp of manhood will not have as smooth a transition as those who went before them. Perhaps it is Winn’s skill that allows for such a poetic, beautiful, and life-affirming read in a novel about war; or perhaps it is only natural for life to prove so tender when it is at risk of ending.