[Brevity] is disastrous in the hands of Timothy Findley. In fact understatement of a very slick and ineffective sort is chronically recurrent in The Wars…. The story is well told, the scenes follow each other with sure logic, and, with one or two exceptions, the thematic interest arises naturally from the events instead of being forced.
The stylistic slickness of which I complained consists mainly of the frequent use of telegraphic one-liners (which one reviewer has associated—I think wrongly—with Hemingway) and typographical cleverness obviously calculated to bring the reader to the edge of his seat. (Two-word sentences. One-word paragraphs. Triple spacing. The works.) Another "special effect" is the studied sensitivity of the prose that occasionally emerges, especially toward the end of the book…. Cheap attempts to add intensity or beauty are never less welcome than when they are unnecessary, as they are here. When the author forgets to be "creative," his prose is entirely adequate to the task, and the intensity and beauty take care of themselves. The book is in any case a substantial performance, and I do not want to make it sound trivial…. [Findley] has overcome heavy odds by writing a convincing historical novel about an event which has been so momentous—and ultimately so inaccessible—as the war which all of us who call ourselves "modern" have come to see as our point of origin. (pp. xxi-xxii)
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