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A year or so ago, I went for breakfast with a 調書をとる／予約する publisher. She told me ? confidently, excitedly ? there was a 調書をとる／予約する coming out that was going to be 抱擁する. The 行き詰まり，妨げる was, her company wasn’t publishing it.
‘It’s called In Memoriam and it’s about World War One,’ she said, almost wistfully. ‘It’s by this woman called Alice Winn. It’s her debut novel. She’s only just turned 30. It’s the one 調書をとる／予約する I really 悔いる not winning. I remember 正確に／まさに where I was when I finished it.’
I nodded and finished my breakfast and didn’t read In Memoriam. I don’t know why. Maybe there was too much fuss; maybe I was jealous of this only-just-turned-30 writer with the 驚くべき／特命の／臨時の debut.
In Memoriam was bought by Penguin in a five-way auction in 2021. The hardback was published in March 2023 and entered The Sunday Times bestseller 名簿（に載せる）／表（にあげる） at number four, beaten only by megabrands Margaret Atwood, James Patterson and Jojo Moyes.
By December, it had won Waterstones Novel of the Year and the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. Penguin says they have sold more than 70,000 copies of the work ? 含むing ebooks and audiobooks ? and, when sales were finalised, In Memoriam was 宣言するd the highest-selling hardback fiction debut of 2023, （警官の）巡回区域，受持ち区域ing Tom Hanks. Oh, and the film 権利s have been sold.
Last month, the paperback was published and I decided, finally, to read In Memoriam. It follows two public schoolboys ? Gaunt and Ellwood ? who become officers in the First World War. They are also in love with each other.
Like that publisher, I remember 正確に／まさに where I was when I finished it: in a tiny cupboard on my lunch break at work, sitting cross-legged on the 床に打ち倒す. This was not the sort of 調書をとる／予約する that could be finished in a noisy office canteen or a 哀れな booth in Pret; it 要求するd silence. When I 現れるd, my 直面する was red from crying.
‘This woman called Alice Winn’ is speaking to me, on Zoom from her apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Now 31, she was born in Paris to American parents, went to 搭乗 schools and university in the UK, and lives between New York and Edinburgh with her husband and daughter.
She got the idea for the novel accidentally. While working part-time as a screenwriter in Los Angeles ? and, on this occasion, procrastinating ? Winn trawled through the digitised 古記録s of her old school newspaper, The Marlburian. (She …に出席するd Marlborough College in Wiltshire.)
Marlborough had published every 問題／発行する of the paper from 1913 to 1919 and Winn read them all. 最初, the 入ること／参加（者）s are by ‘these funny, irreverent, sort of smug, する権利を与えるd public-schoolboys, who have every 推論する／理由 to believe they’re going to 相続する the earth’. They 令状 cricket-ma tch 報告（する）／憶測s and publish poems. ‘It was good fun.’
Then the war begins and the younger boys start to 令状 obituaries, in a section called In Memoriam, for their older brothers and friends. The 早期に eulogies are ‘chillingly 愛国的な’, says Winn. ‘Lines like, “We can only envy him and his noble death.’’’
‘And then the war goes on and it becomes 明らかな that it’s not going to be just a few of the older brothers and older friends who are going to die ? it’s going to be a lot of them.
The younger boys realise they are also going to have to fight in this war. And the tenor changes and it becomes just so 猛烈に, 猛烈に sad.’ In total, 749 students and staff members from Marlborough died during the war. Winn discovered, through the paper, one family with three sons: all 長，率いる boys, all killed, one by one.
Alice sought the advice of gay friends for the 調書をとる／予約する
‘I had read a lot of war literature, but this wasn’t like anything I knew,’ says Winn. Most memoirs were written after the fighting had ended. ‘These newspapers were so 即座の. I couldn’t not think about them. And I was in LA, where people don’t really know as much about World War One, so I would talk about these newspapers and everyone just thought I was 存在 morbid.’
So she started to 令状 a war novel ? interspersed with school newspaper articles. Winn finished her first 草案 in two weeks. If you have ever tried to 令状 a 調書をとる／予約する, you’ll know this is bonkers. If you 港／避難所’t, let me be （疑いを）晴らす: this is bonkers. ‘It just （機の）カム 注ぐing out.’
She then spent 18 months editing and rewriting. She asked friends to read 草案s (‘I’m very promiscuous with my 草案s’), and sought the opinions of gay and bisexual friends to make sure th e romantic scenes were 正確な.
‘I had one friend who was really generous and candid about how to make the sex scenes feel real, but also about how to make the characters ? outside of the sex ? behave more like men.
I mean, I don’t want to put too 罰金 a point on this, but I remember at one 行う／開催する／段階 he asked me, “So, who has the bigger penis?” And I was like, “I don’t know!” And he said, “井戸／弁護士席, the characters know!”’ (Winn 含むd this anatomical 観察 in the 調書をとる／予約する. It paid off. In a review for The Times, critic John Maier 最高潮の場面d the line as 存在 a 示す of ‘striking acuity’.)
In Winn’s first 草案, almost every 兵士’s death was 記録，記録的な／記録するd as ‘発射 in the 脚’ or ‘発射 in the 長，率いる’. Because ‘I couldn’t really imagine the 暴力／激しさ’. Then she read first-手渡す accounts like Ernst J?nger’s 嵐／襲撃する of Steel and Edward Liveing’s 24 Hours on the Somme. There were stories of 兵士s 存在 発射 in the 長，率いる ? and 生き残るing; of men 存在 boiled alive in water-filled 爆撃する 穴を開けるs. She 挿入するd all of this into the novel.
‘I had to go to the 最初の／主要な sources, because the things that happened were so much more creatively horrible than I could conceive of as a 平時（の） person.’
Those sources also showed the subtle ways that war 影響する／感情d 兵士s. In 嵐／襲撃する of Steel, a stormtrooper ? 慣れさせるd to violent 傷害s ? passes out at the sight of a man accidentally cutting his 手渡す.
In Winn’s novel a 兵士, returning home from the 前線, faints on seeing his mother prick her finger with a sewing needle.
In Memoriam is the first 調書をとる／予約する Winn has published, but it is not the first she has written. When she left university ? she read English at Oxford ? Winn 公約するd she would 令状 a 調書をとる／予約する within a year. In fact, she wrote three 調書をとる／予約するs in three years, in three different genres. (She 辞退するs to tell me what any were about: ‘No way!’)
非，不，無 was published, nor even got her an スパイ／執行官. ‘Everyone kept telling me, “Oh, J K Rowling was 拒絶するd by 12 publishers.” And I was like, “Yes, but at least she had an スパイ／執行官!” I couldn’t even （疑いを）晴らす that 障害物.’
結局 she finished her final 草案 of In Memoriam. ‘I thought, if I don’t get this 調書をとる／予約する published, I’m going to die.’ As she says this, Winn looks almost serious.
Today, she is 令状ing a novel about the Knights of the 一連の会議、交渉／完成する （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する. (‘It’s going terribly, thank you for asking.’) She’s 現在／一般に ‘in the 少しのd’ of 中世 history. ‘There’s a lot of 研究. If you think about it, World War One is only four-and-a-half years. The Middle Ages is 1,000.’
Still, she is not so bogged 負かす／撃墜する by 中世 knights as not to enjoy her debut’s success. ‘It is sort of miraculous. I never dreamed it would happen like this.’
In Memoriam by Alice Winn is published by Penguin, £9.99. To order a copy for £8.99 until 7 April, go to mailshop.co.uk/調書をとる／予約するs or call 020 3176 2937. 解放する／自由な UK 配達／演説／出産 on orders over £25.