Birdsong (novel) on how the novel, like many other WWI novels, thematically focuses on the way in which the experience of trauma shapes individual psyches. Similarly, because of the parallel narratives WWI and 1970s Britain, the novel explores metahistorical questions about how to document and recover narratives about the past. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, like Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy. "Birdsong" is part of a loose trilogy of novels by Sebastian Faulks, alongside "The Girl at the Lion d'Or" and
Birdsong (novel) novel often focus on the fluid reading experience as well as the novel's effective treatment of "'real' people" within the trauma of war. Gorra describes the novel as mostly a strong WWI novel, characterising it as "superb" with prose that is "spare and precise". The review published in "Kirkus Reviews" was glowing: "Once more, Faulks shows his unparalleled strengths as a writer of plain human life and high, high compassion. A wonderful book, ringing with truth." Consistently one of the greatest critiques of the novel concerns its 1970s plot-line. For example, Gorra found that the addition of a parallel narrative