Hi, all:
I bring you a book by a very popular author I hadn’t read before. I’m sure it will do very well, but I wasn’t totally convinced by it. I’ve never been too partial to the romances thrown into some genres, but many readers like them, so…
The Women: A Novel by Kristin Hannah
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
About the author:
Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels. Her newest novel, The Women, about the nurses who served in the Vietnam War, will be released on February 6, 2024.
The Four Winds was published in February of 2021 and immediately hit #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie bookstore’s bestseller lists. Additionally, it was selected as a book club pick by the both Today Show and The Book Of the Month club, which named it the best book of 2021.
In 2018, The Great Alone became an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and was named the Best Historical Novel of the Year by Goodreads.
In 2015, The Nightingale became an international blockbuster, was Goodreads Best Historical Fiction novel for 2015, and won the coveted People’s Choice award for best fiction in the same year. It was named Best Book of the Year by Amazon, iTunes, Buzzfeed, the Wall Street Journal, Paste, and The Week.
The Nightingale is currently in pre-production at Tri Star. Firefly Lane, her beloved novel about two best friends, was the #1 Netflix series around the world, in the week it came out. The popular TV show stars Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke.
A former attorney, Kristin lives in the Pacific Northwest.
My review:
I thank NetGalley and the publisher (Pan MacMillan) for providing me with an ARC copy of the book, which I freely chose to review.
I had read many comments about Kristin Hannah and her novels, but I hadn’t read any yet, so I can’t compare it to her previous work. I have been interested in the Vietnam War and the role the United States played in it for a long time, and I’ve read books (both, fiction and non-fiction), and watched movies, series, and documentaries about it, so this novel seemed a good fit for me.
As the description explains, the novel centres on Frankie, a girl from a navy town in California, whose father has never lived up to his disappointment about not having been able to serve his country, and who worships everything military, in particular, navy-related. He is very proud when his son goes to Vietnam. Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan, and by the time Frankie has decided to enlist as a nurse, tragedy has already fallen on the family.
The war is a shock for her, but thanks to two of the veteran nurses (Ethel and Barb) and the patience and understanding of the rest of the staff, she develops into a great nurse, and she ends up signing up for a second tour of duty. She is a religious (Catholic) girl, and pretty conventional and naïve, so she tries to keep men at bay at first, following her strict moral standards, but eventually, she ends up having a relationship with a young man she knew from before, and they make plans for the future.
When she returns to the US, she doesn’t get the hero reception she had heard about from WWII. Instead, she is spat on and called names. She had heard of the anti-war movement, but the reality of it hits her hard. That, together with flashbacks and other clear symptoms of PTSD, and a serious loss shortly after her arrival, make her reintroduction into civil life very complicated. Despite the support of her two nurse friends (who’ve both made new lives for themselves), she doesn’t manage to fit in and find her place, and events (and to a certain extent, her own choices and her way of dealing with things, or trying not to deal with them) keep conspiring and take her to breaking point.
This novel is a mixture of historical fiction (it captures well the atmosphere of Vietnam, especially the hospitals, although it doesn’t dedicate much space to the Vietnamese people other than in passing), coming-of-age story, and romance/melodrama. In many ways, Frankie is a typical protagonist of a romantic novel: beautiful, naïve, principled, quite green… All the men she meets fall for her, but she sticks to her rules of conduct, at least initially. She falls in between two eras: her mother (and father) expect her to marry somebody of her upper social class, have babies, and have a full social life, taking an interest in some good causes. At the same time, the Hippy movement has arrived, the Civil Rights Movement is in full swing, and so is the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women are demanding more freedom and taking their destiny in their own lives. Frankie doesn’t seem happy in either of these two worlds, and although she tries to get help for her trauma, nobody acknowledges that there were women in the war, and the veteran services and hospitals are only set to look after those who saw action (as if nurses hadn’t seen more than their fair share of it).
The story is interesting and it’s difficult to put down once you get into it. On the other hand, I never felt too attached to the protagonist, although I empathised with her and felt quite moved by the way things developed towards the end. I would have liked to get to know more about her two friends, Ethel and Barb. We don’t see or hear things from their perspective, and they are never the focus of the novel, although they represent the support and sisterhood well. The part of their experiences in Vietnam and also what Frankie experiences when she gets back home felt realistic and gripping, but the parts related to her relationships felt overdone and melodramatic. There were many coincidences, many tragic events one after another, and I ended up feeling as if I were watching a soap opera gone to extremes for effect. The other aspect that I thought worked well was the coming-of-age side of things, and how Frankie manages to find a way to become independent and to find a meaningful outlook in life. I would have preferred it if the author had avoided the last twist (this is another case of ‘a twist too far’, in my opinion) but I’m sure readers who like romantic novels will enjoy it.
Hannah includes an author’s note, where she explains her interest in the subject and the process of creation of this novel, and a section of acknowledgements which is particularly interesting, as she mentions the people she consulted and recommends some books written by people who survived the experience and others she used as a source, and those will be of interest to people who want to deepen their knowledge of the Vietnam War and the experience of the (western) women who joined the war effort.
In sum, this is a book suited to those interested in historical fiction about the Vietnam War, the role of women in that war, and particularly readers who enjoy a good dose of romance and melodrama mixed into their historically inspired novels.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this novel, thanks to all of you for visiting, reading, sharing, commenting, and liking this post, and remember to keep smiling!
Just Olga 