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) split structure provides one of the most sophisticated elements of the novel. De Groot writes that Benson's investigation of personal history allows Faulks to examine the difference between the two perspectives on the memory, highlighting the "unknowability of the horror of war" and of history more generally. Like other novels documenting WWI, the shock and trauma of death is embedded throughout the book's depiction of the war. John Mullen, reviewing the book for "The Guardian", described the depictions of the Battle of the Somme particularly brutal. According to scholar Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż, Faulks treats the war as a way to "test