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) reviews emphasize the novel's imagery of the battle experience in and amongst the trenches. For Slade, the novel "produces a vivid and traumatizing description of the sights and sounds of life and death in (and under the trenches)"; the principal cause of this, he says, is "the pure fury and intensity of the imagery created page after page". "Birdsong" is one of Faulks's best-received works of fiction, both by the public and amongst reviewers. The British press offered considerable praise, with positive reviews from "Today", "The Guardian", "The Observer", "The Daily Mail", "The Mail on Sunday", "The Sunday Express", "The