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Rereading this, I now take issue with my own assertions in my first-read review (below) that this is 'a simple and simply-told story': despite this being West's first novel, she chooses to tell the story via Jenny, Chris' cousin, secretly in love with him, and an interestingly limited narrator. She is perhaps the person who is most changed by events in the book moving from an unthinking, in-bred class prejudice that instinctually despises Margaret to something far more perceptive, open, and enlightened.

Chris, the eponymous 'soldier' is the least articulated of characters: not surprisingly, perhaps, West concentrates on the three women: pretty, vacuous Kitty; faded Margaret whose open-hearted graciousness becomes a form of sanctuary, if only temporary; and Jenny herself, the perpetual looker-on.

In lots of ways the war itself is almost unnecessary - there's no sense of privation at Baldry court, almost an oasis of calm and salvation, and Chris' amnesia could have been prompted in other circumstances. And yet, in other ways, this is a book which encapsulates how the war helped to break down social and class-based securities: Baldry Court is breached by Margaret with her shabby yellow raincoat, yet it embraces her, is enriched by her, and will be the poorer when she is exiled and when Kitty is, once more, its chatelaine.

So this is deceptively simple at first glance and easy to read - but the use of a limited 1st person narrator whose vision we don't always share (especially at the start) makes this technically skilled. A subtle, impressive novel, far more resonant than its slim pages might indicate.

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Set in 1916, Chris is wounded in France and, shell-shocked, loses his memory. Fifteen years are wiped out and he becomes again the twenty-one year old young man just graduated from university falling in love for the first time, rather than the thirty-six year old man with a wife and responsibilities which he really is. Told through the voice of his devoted cousin, this is a simple and simply-told story which yet is hugely resonant and deeply moving.

There are no literary tricks to the narration, no self-conscious flourishes: and, as readers, we are drawn close inside a detailed and intimate story, that is both emotionally-restrained and feels very true.

The three women - Kitty, the beautiful wife; Jenny, the devoted cousin; Margaret, the lower-class lover - are the focus of the book, and West dissects them and their social places with a scalpel, sharp and accurate.

The Freudian psychology which imbues the end of the story feels a little old-fashioned now, but would have been relatively fresh at the time of writing (1918-19).

Overall this is a much deeper story than appears on the simple surface: the return refers not just to the physical return of Chris, but also his return to his place in the social world of the time and the reassumption of all the responsibilities and privileges that go with that. And his reluctance and stoicism in the face of those is a sad indictment of what is meant (and means?) to be a man.