Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #565375 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 311 pages

Andrew Marr: Chief Political Correspondent for the BBC
"A great theme and taut story telling: I much enjoyed it." Andrew Marr

Synopsis
It is the summer of 1917. Isaac Rosenberg has been on the Western Front for over a year, having barely survived a terrible winter on the Somme. Temporarily attached to the Royal Engineers, he helps to load barbed wire on limbers, hauls it by mule train up to the front at night, and repairs damage to barricades in no-man's land. Although highly dangerous, Rosenberg views his lot as much improved, and he finds more time to write. From his upbringing in the slums of Whitechapel, to his futile death in the killing fields of Europe, the author explores the evolution of a writer whose war poetry is now widely acknowledged as among the finest ever written. Paradoxically, while Rosenberg's physical and mental health were on the wane, his terrible experiences on the Western Front appeared to boost the power and originality of his work. Throughout the novel, the reader is given insight into the troubled psyche of a poet who, despite living in constant fear and subject to the contempt of his peers, still managed to retain a highly original perspective on mankind's descent into darkness.

"Beating for Light" blends fact and fiction in a way which moves beyond the biographical, breathing life into the fears and aspirations of a great artist while, simultaneously, providing a fascinating insight into one of history's greatest watersheds.

From the Publisher
Beating for Light

Geoff Akers
Juniper Books, £9.99

RUPERT Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen: they all sit proudly in the pantheon of War Poets. But what about Isaac Rosenberg? Well - he does too, sort of.

Conventional wisdom has it that Rosenberg's deeply humble background - all the other poets were officers, Rosenberg was a private - and his untimely death have conspired to deny him his superior place in that pantheon. Geoff Akers' Beating for Light sets out to put this right.

The book is a historical novel; a fiction. Akers uses a number of sources and datum points and joins the dots skilfully with his own prose. The dialogue, the characterisation, the action, the sex: these are all fleshed out by the imagination of the author.

The story is almost a cliché. A son of poor Jewish immigrants in Victorian/Edwardian London, Rosenberg receives an artistic education. He paints with some success and moves to the colonies for his health and to escape unrequited love. Lecturing, painting, and seduced by a rich woman, he finds material success, but perversely turns his back on it all for the sake of his art. He returns to Britain and enlists as a private in the army in October 1915.

His refusal of promotion, his eschewing of the chance to be a war artist, the turbulent relationship with his patron, his grindingly basic life at the lowest level in the army, his death on active service in the last few months of the war; all seem inevitable. Even the fact that he has no known grave somehow resonates with the picture of this gloomy, inarticulate, self-absorbed young man.

Akers performs a double service. Historical novels, if they are to be of any greater merit than The Archers, must tell us something of a person or period we don't know already. Akers paints a vivid picture of Rosenberg the person. One is struck with a sense of unrelieved, drab melo-misery, but this is probably not far from the truth. It's a good story well told. He also helps us to interpret Rosenberg's poetry, which is not the easiest to penetrate. Rosenberg was not an easy man, and neither is he an easy poet. Careful study, imagination and perseverance will reward the poetry student with a precious find in Rosenberg. A read of Beating for Light will also help, but Sassoon, and those who are more accessible on first read, always have the advantage.

Akers and Rosenberg in one sense face a similar challenge. They are both trying to describe something which ultimately we cannot share; something indescribable. Rosenberg is trying to express the horror of war to those who haven't experienced it. While some write or paint, many resort to silence; Rosenberg tries with poetry.

Akers is seeking to enlighten us about an introspective, lowly, gloomy, inaccessible, brilliant Jewish poet who was killed in the depths of his misery, yet at the height of his powers.

Some use the lecture hall; others use biography; Akers' medium is historical fiction. Notwithstanding the impossibility of their tasks, all succeed in advancing our understanding and we are the richer for their efforts.
Ian Gardiner - Scotland on Sunday

Customer Reviews

Powerful and Moving
I really enjoyed this book. I knew nothing of Rosenberg or his poetry and it is a great intro to both. It is a blend of fact and fiction and each chapter is prefaced by the poet's own work. His short life is really vividly recreated and I liked the insight I got into what life was like for a struggling family in WW1. I also liked the detail about the poet's contacts with other poets of the period. The author made me empathise strongly with Rosenberg and the description of his death and other war scenes was very moving. Also, despite the fact that this is a story of someone who had a pretty miserable life, I was left with a real sense of wonder and optimism about the strength and tenacity of his creative spirit.

A War Poet
I found this book an absorbing read. I had not heard of Isaac Rosenberg before and I am grateful to Geoff Akers for his graphic fictionalised account of the brief life of this poet and artist.
The difficulties he had in the England of the beginning of the twentieth century, with its social and racial prejudices, are well described. The common soldier's view of the futility of the Great War is apparent in the dialogue and the horror of trench warfare comes through clearly. Yet from all of this came wonderful poetry which deserves to be much better known. This is a book I would recommend to others without reservation.

Illuminating
An excellent read from start to finish. This moving story of First World War poet Isaac Rosenberg brings to life the appalling conditions of trench warfare. Akers achieves this through the use of scintillating dialogue, showing us how the poetic mind struggles to survive in such a hostile environment. Equally fascinating is the skillful depiction of life as the son of poor Jewish immigrants in London and the underlying awkwardness of the poet socially. A great read.