Patricia Anthony's Flanders: A Brutal Portrait of WWI

Introduction: A Neglected Masterpiece

Patricia Anthony's Flanders is a brilliant piece of writing. There is something very real about this fictional war story, and what makes it worth reading more than once is its highly realistic portrayal of war and the anguish it produces. Anthony wrote the book in 1998, but unfortunately it failed to find an audience — a disturbing, depressing, and sad fact. The blame, however, must not be placed on Flanders itself. Rather, it rests with the poor marketing of the book by a publishing house better known for science fiction. Flanders is as far removed from science fiction as any story can possibly be. It is a dark tale focusing on the futility of war and on the ethical conflict that can easily rob an honest man of everything he once believed in.

Setting and Protagonist

Flanders is set in Europe in 1916, when World War I was shattering the dreams of many and casually eroding an entire generation. Travis Lee Stanhope is an idealistic youth brilliant enough to have been admitted to medical school but naive enough to leave it all for a chance to see Europe. He enlists in the British Army and goes to war in his idealistic yearning to experience everything firsthand. His idealism and naivety receive an excruciating shock, however, when he discovers the horrors of war. In his letters to his younger brother in Texas, Stanhope reveals the true face of war in a manner that is at once dispassionate and fiery. It is as if he is unable to come to terms with reality. Travis does not fully comprehend that war could be so horribly sickening, and his letters reveal a deeply disturbed and lost soul.

The Horror of the Trenches

Anthony's prose captures the superficial beauty and underlying horror of the battlefield with equal precision. Stanhope observes in one letter: "It's beautiful from a distance, war. Artillery glittered and sparked along the horizon. The strikes struck cloud-high blossoms of fire. Green flares sailed the night like drowsy fireflies" (Flanders, p. 36). There is nothing beautiful about the book except the prose itself. The author has poured her heart into the work, and everything comes straight from the battlefields. Even reading it transports you to an entirely different world of rotting bodies, failing youth, and empty souls.

The physical reality of trench warfare is rendered with unflinching detail. Stanhope writes: "The trenches here are crumbling. The mud's ankle-deep. Dig a hole anywheres, it fills up with water. The soil is full of stinking bodies and white, knobby bones. The earth spews up death. It's built into the walls. Down the trench a Frenchie, last season's casualty, is sticking halfway out the bags: one horizon-blue leg; a bloated arm with two fingers off, another rotted to bone. The boys who were here before us said they'd miss him" (Flanders, p. 210).

Conclusion: A Career Undone by Poor Marketing

All in all, the novel stands alongside other exceptional war fiction such as A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front. Unfortunately, not every author is as fortunate as her contemporaries, because handing her work to a science fiction publisher was equivalent to career suicide. Patricia Anthony probably did not know which genre to place her novel in and thus offered it to Ace Publishers — little knowing what that decision would ultimately cost her writing career.

References

Anthony, P. (1998). Flanders. Ace Publishers.