An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd

From Goodreads

An Ice-cream War is William Boyd's hilarious bestselling novel of love and battle 'We will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!' British soldier, East Africa, October 1914 As millions are slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign is being waged in East Africa - a war they continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop. Primarily a gripping story of the men and women swept up by the passions of love and battle, William Boyd's magnificently entertaining novel also elicits the cruel futility and tragedy of it all. An Ice-cream War will be loved by fansof Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa, as well as readers of Ben Macintyre, SebastianFaulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel. 'Compulsively readable' Observer 'He has a black-edged laughter of his own . . . quite outstanding' Sunday Times WILLIAM BOYD has received world-wide acclaim for his novels.

My thoughts

This was quite a wordy story at times. It's set during World War I and if it wasn't one of my Library Reading Group reads, I doubt that I'd have picked it up.

I felt that the writer did the story justice and told the story in a sympathetic way that explored the dilemmas and stress that those at home and at war must have been under. It was a very thought provoking read, it wasn't a light hearted read at all and times was quite graphic in the telling of certain atrocities that happened to the characters.

I would recommend this story to others interested in reading stories set in and around World War I.

I gave it a 6/10 and I can't say that I enjoyed it, but I'm glad that I finished it rather than giving up on it.