First, I should probably go ahead and thank Allison for this one. She threw this into a Christmas box she sent me as a last minute whim. To be honest, I probably never would have picked it up on my own. But that would have been a shame, because this story was fantastic. So far this year is starting out wonderfully. This is my 4th 5-star read this year alone. When I think of that ratio, I feel like I've been super generous already this year. But I think that everything has been deserving of the rating I've given, so I'm not going to change anything. :)This book is absolutely deserving of a 5-star rating. I would NEVER have guessed that this is a first novel. Sometimes a first novel will take you by surprise, just by being far better than any first novel should be, and better by far than some 5th or 10th or 25th novels. This is one of those. I was feeling kind of blah about the book that I was reading, and this happened to be within arms reach, so I picked it up. When I say that this book grabbed me from the very first page, I'm not exaggerating. Just the descriptions and the words and the feelings that flow off the page were enough to hook me. I wrote down my first quote at page 13, and then kept jotting them down throughout the book. There are so, so many insightful and beautiful quotes in this book. So many vivid descriptions and heart-tugging and honest emotions. This book is an absolute gem. And I do NOT say that often. This is Patrick Delaney's story. His life story, in a way, but really his life centered around small islands of understanding and happiness that he found in two people that he loved and lost. We see Patrick through his eyes, and his insights and memories and at different stages of his life. We see how he's changed with each stage, even though he doesn't tell us, "I was different back then..." or anything, I could just see. We see him as a scared, naive 20 year old heading off to war and meeting the first person who changed his life. We see him as a 30 year old, more than a little jaded, now visiting the war memorial and meeting the 2nd person who changed his life. Then finally we see him as an old man, looking back over his life and pondering his impending death. Each of Patrick's "lives" was represented on the page with truth and grace and clarity that I think would be hard for a different writer to carry off, let alone to do so by intertwining them in and amongst each other without losing his (the writer's) way, or losing the reader. The three stories blended together perfectly, and felt so intimate that toward the end, I felt as if I was losing a little bit of myself in Patrick's loss. I am infinitely impressed that Hull was able to write an 83 year old man pondering life and old age and death as convincingly as he did. One would think that he was writing about his own experience. It was beautiful and staggeringly sad at the same time. But then, 83 year old Patrick is witty and funny too. Here's the quote I mentioned writing down from page 13:"I thought dying old would be easier than dying young. Now I see how that very expectation makes it so much worse. Die young and fists clench with rage; die old and shoulders merely shrug. If you are young and dying, you are embraced with love and sympathy; charities exist solely to accommodate your final wishes. If you are old and dying, well you're right on course, aren't you? Take too long about it and the looks begin; subdued impatience at first, then glares as though you've been lingering at a window table in a crowded upscale restaurant long after your coffee has gone cold, the table cleared of everything but stains and crumbs."Or this one, which I loved because it describes the book lover so perfectly:"Like most bookworms I read so as not to be alone, which often annoys those who are trying to make conversation with me."This is a book that deals with war head on. It pulls no punches, and isn't shy about showing how awful and horrible war is. It's not glamorous. It's not romantic or virtuous or glorious. It's terrible. All of them. Patrick talks about what it is to be a part of something so terrible, and what it is to survive it. This book touched me on so many different levels. It was beautifully written, heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time, and shows us that loss is maybe subjective. If we love someone enough, they are always with us, even when they are not.
A lovely story!In a nursing home in California, WWI vet Patrick Delaney is fighting new battles: against old age (he's 81), stomach cancer and the knowledge of his encroaching death. This earnest, elegant first novel takes the form of Patrick's diary, in which he details the humbling infirmities of an aging body and looks back at the defining moments of his life--the war itself, when he lost his best friend, Daniel, and the brief but intense love affair he had 10 years later with Daniel's grieving lover, Julia. The diary layers these two stories with scenes from the nursing home in short alternating sections. Like the dots in a pointillist painting, they merge into the larger work, a story of love and death. "Our lives--all our lives--are a struggle between love and loss," Julia tells Patrick in Paris, where their affair unfolds over one week in 1928. Hull is ultimately better at depicting war than--Patrick's memories of Julia are tinged with romantic cliche: her eyes are like "precious stone" and her smile suggests a "combination of strength and vulnerability." But his descriptions of the war are frightening and physical, with dirt dislodged by artillery shells filling Patrick's mouth and flares illuminating severed body parts in the trenches. Hull's research is assiduous; he seamlessly incorporates period detail, referencing the toiletries the enlistees received in their trench kits and how the weather affected the roads at the Battle of Verdun. Equally honest and effective are the unsparing descriptions of the loneliness, physical decrepitude and indignities of old age. Patrick is a winning narrator, charming and honest and direct, and the reader will root for him right through the book's Hollywood ending, where he makes one last stand against death, his final enemy. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Do You like book Losing Julia (2001)?
It seems so thin to call this a history/romance since it is so much more. Patrick Delaney is an 81-year-old living in a nursing home and he is also a veteran of World War I. During that war he listened to his friend and comrade in arms, Daniel, talk about his fiance, Julia. Ten years after the war, when Patrick is married and Daniel dead, Patrick meets Julia in France and the two have a brief but intense love affair. Their relationship is more than just an affair, but Patrick returns home to his family and Julia eventually sends him a letter that she is married. The books is more than this because it is also Patrick's philosophical reflections on his life and what really matters. He comes to the conclusion the striving and awards given for work is a shadow of what matters. The most important is how deeply and honestly we can love our families, our friends and our lives. As he thinks in one passage: "What wretches we are! Congenital narcissists who cling like drowning rats to the notion of a self that is fixed and strong and permanent, a delusion defended by material possessions and job titles and diplomas and bolstered by drugs and therapy and social convention. (Ironically, the more effective our false selves, the more we compromise our deeper selves.)" You cannot read this book without being touched by man's inability to get life completely right. It is easy to sympathize with Patrick and his struggle to come to terms with aging. This is a story which, as the old cliche says, will stay with you long after you have read it and begs a revisit. Quote: "The tragedy of man is what dies inside himself while he still lives." - Albert Schweitzer
—Nancy
From the battlefields of World War I to a present day nursing home, Patrick Delaney describes his longtime love for Julia, the wife of his best friend, Daniel, as he meets her as a young widow at a memorial service at Verdun, France, through their brief time together to their ultimate separation and its impact on his life.Group rated this high a 5Several people needed time to process this book after they finished reading it. They loved the authors writing style, his insight of WWI and the humor he put in to his book.They cared about Patrick Delaney and Daniel. The author doesn't tell us enough about Julia.
—Lansing Public Library
This book was chosen for our "Hear Book" book club. This means that the books belongs to our heart, has changed us, or made a substantial impact in our lives. When I first began reading Losing Julia, at about page 50, I groaned. This was someone's heart book and I thought there would be nothing worse than finishing this book.Then I reached about page 150 and it all changed. Patrick, the main character, stole my heart. He is a cynical man, unable to see all the wonder and beauty he brings into the word. His small acts of compassion and kindness for the other residents and the employees at Great Oaks were simple and easy and nothing special to him. Yet they brought the best of life back to these people. I wished I could hug him each and every time he did something grand and just shrugged his shoulders.This book was not about Julia for me. It was about the war scenes, the horror, the destruction, the fear that the men endured. It was about the scenes in the retirement home, what life is like as you wait for death. Julia was an afterthought, yet a moment in history that completely defined Patrick as a man, creating the loving soul within him that he could not see.So this has now become one of my heart books.
—Jacki
