The Photographer of the Lost by Caroline Scott

The Photographer of the Lost by Caroline Scott is a beautifully written and meticulously researched homage to the soldiers and their families who lived and died through The Great War. It's set in 1921 but time shifts to France during the worst years of the war with place names that still resonate today for instance the Somme and Ypres. They are indelibly linked to the national psyche of all Allied countries with connotations of mass slaughter and destruction but we have the luxury of being emotionally remote, the characters in The Photographer of the Lost do not. Scott has created a narrative that leaves the reader with a deep sense of pathos, the characters may be fictional but their suffering represents the suffering of an era and one cannot help but be moved by it. 

At first it was shocking that so many wives and female relatives were unable to move forward from the death of their soldiers. But then it was all too plausible and I could not help but reflect as to what would I have done with no grave to visit and even worse no confirmation of death. Scott describes the agony of the dreaded purgatory of loved ones being 'missing presumed dead' with great skill and also taught me something about the British officers and soldiers who never survived but remained in France bearing an overwhelming sense of responsibility for those left rotting in the mud of France. Scott highlights the sense of duty prevalent at the time that did not cease just because the war ended.

However, it would be wrong to suggest that The Photographer of the Lost is one of those stories that you read because you feel you should but that leave you with a sense of unbearable sadness, for it is not. The subject matter is laced with poignancy at the sense of loss and inability to move forwards but ultimately it's also a love story and life affirming. Life moves on whether we want it to or not and the characters slowly find ways to live rather than just exist with the new equilibrium. The Photographer of the Lost is a beautiful love letter as to how the humane spirit is indomitable.

Thanks to Anne Cater and Simon and Schuster for my gifted copy.