China Court

I think China Court is the last of Rumer Godden's major works that I still had left unread, and I've been hoarding a copy for about three years until I finally crumbled (what if I went under a bus and I still hadn't got around to reading it?)

There is so much to love about this 1960 novel. It further expands and develops on her earlier book, A Fugue in Time, which also examined the history of a house and its family through several generations simultaneously, but China Court is a country house and the prosperous Quin family balances a precarious position between classes. The stories of a handful of outstanding characters and marriages are stranded together in Godden's infinitely skilful way (though the family tree at the front of the book is very helpful). The present day narrative centres on young Tracy, who has returned to the family home just too late for the death of her beloved grandmother, who holds much of the novel together both as the matriarch Mrs Quin, and the village orphan and interloper Ripsie.

The love triangle between bastard orphan Ripsie and the two Quin brothers is devastating; the history of thwarted spinster Eliza in the previous generation is tragic. And I thought I was going to love the present-day fairy tale pairing between Tracy and Mrs Quin's protege, Peter (running the farm but nobly born, natch), until the last few pages, when Peter hits Tracy -- okay, he 'slaps' her and he warns her first, so arguably, she 'provokes' him, but this sudden assertion of old-fashioned masculine domination left a sour taste in my mouth. It's such a shame, because China Court is a really magical Godden novel in so many ways, if not for this shocking ending I think it would have become almost my favourite of her novels (though nothing will ever beat This House of Brede for me).
 

Capture

I've felt a special connection to Amanda Lohrey ever since I entered an HQ magazine short story competition in 1995. I didn't win, but I was awarded a special second prize of $1000, which was a lot of money for me back then, and I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Amanda Lohrey, who was one of the judges, had gone into bat for my story (it was called 'The Fat Doubloons of Love').

Anyway, I do like Amanda Lohrey's writing, too, quite apart from feeling grateful for that financial boost, and I was especially intrigued by the description of Capture. Jim Mather is a sixty-something academic psychiatrist who is persuaded to make a study of people who believe they have experienced alien abduction. With the help of his assistant, Lucy, he interviews many 'experiencers,' hoping to find common ground between them, but each brings their own meaning to what has happened to them (or what they believed has happened), and Mather grows increasingly restless and irritated by his inability to impose coherence on the group. Meanwhile he has philosophical discussions with Lucy, catches up with an old lover, and has a shiatsu treatment.

This is a short novel, and it's reflective and meditative rather than action-packed (like most of Lohrey's work), but it's packed with thoughtful and provocative moments. What do we believe, and what do we believe in, and why? Do we live in the shadow of death, or bask in the joy of life? One of my friends described Capture as 'weird' but noted that it has stayed with her. I have a feeling it's going to stay with me, too.

Summerwater

Almost exactly a year ago, I was blown away by Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall (thanks to Penni Russon for the recommendation). I wasn't aware when I borrowed Summerwater that a TV miniseries of it was released last year -- the reviews I've found have been lukewarm at best, but it's a weird coincidence, and if it pops up on my screen I'll probably at least have a look at it. It's an odd choice for an adaptation, because each of the chapters in Summerwater is so internal -- each voiced from the point of view of a different character, and with some overlap of events, but each with a very distinct attitude and each one very self-absorbed. It's not easy to dramatise a narrative which depends so heavily on internal monologues, and it sounds as if the TV writers didn't quite pull it off.

I do love a book written from different perspectives, even one like this which relies on a mounting sense of tension rather than any startling events, until the very end. It traces a single day in a rainy Scottish campground, where half a dozen families and couples are marooned by the weather. It's not a long book, and it would make a good teaching aid for demonstrating what 'voice' is and how it works. My one quibble would be that we don't get to see inside the heads of the 'outsider' family, the Ukrainian mother and her young daughter, in whose cabin noisy parties are held every night to the fury of the other guests. I'm guessing this was a deliberate choice, to keep them firmly in the role of outsiders, but it still makes me slightly uneasy that we don't get the same insight into their lives as we get into everyone else's.

Sarah Moss is a beautiful and skilful writer, but her subject matter is unrelentingly dark. In a way I'm glad that Summerwater and Ghost Wall are no longer than they are.
 

The Correspondent

  

I heard about Virginia Evans' novel, The Correspondent, at the Sorrento Writers' Festival, where it was discussed by a panel of psychiatrists. I was going to reserve it at the local library, but balked when I realised there were 143 people ahead of me in the queue! Eventually I found it on the shelf at my reliable Athenaeum so I was able to gobble it down.

The Correspondent is that delightfully old-fashioned thing, an epistolary novel, something which has become much rarer since texts and email have pretty much replaced the snail mail letter. Most of Sybil's correspondence is via pen and paper, but there are also emails. The short format of most of the letters keeps the pace humming along, and the elliptical references to past events and current relationships let the reader do just enough work to piece the story together -- it's very cleverly done.

Of course a clever structure is wasted if the central narrative isn't also engaging, but Sybil's story has plenty of hooks. She's old, she's isolated, she's stroppy and doesn't mind picking a fight; she's estranged from her daughter and divorced from her husband, who now both live overseas; one of her sons died as a child, and we suspect that Sybil's troubles can be traced to this source. But she also seems to have a sinister stalker, and a couple of suitors, and a teenage boy to mentor, and it's through all these relationships, hostile, friendly and affectionate, that Sybil is gradually drawn back into the world. 

The Correspondent is a satisfying, fun and gently moving read, a perfect marriage of form and substance.

Mariana

My adult fiction pile has been a bit slender lately, so I was casting around for something to read, when I remembered that there were a couple of novels in this collection of Monica Dickens' books that I hadn't ever got around to reading. I'd bought it yonks ago mostly for One Pair of Hands (memoir about working as a domestic servant in the 1930s) and One Pair of Feet (memoir about working as a nurse).

Mariana was first published in 1940, after One Pair of Hands, when Dickens was only about twenty three, and apparently it's quite autobiographical. It's very much a young author's book, focused on Mary's childhood and adolescence, and her various misadventures in love and career. Ostensibly the message of the novel is something about becoming an individual and growing into one's own unique personality -- it's just a shame that Mary seems to accomplish this mostly by meeting the perfect man. 

Mariana is a gently funny novel, but plot-wise there is not much at stake here (though Dickens does her best to ratchet up the tension by making Mary's husband's ship sink on the third page -- and of course we don't yet know exactly who that husband might be). Nonetheless it's engaging, and the details of daily life in 1930s London are the main drawcard for me: dances, theatre, nightclubs, fashion, fog, appendicitis (which means weeks lying luxuriously in hospital and then convalescence at the seaside afterwards). Nowadays they probably kick you out the same day as the surgery!

The Death of the Heart

I have very dim memories of reading this copy of Elizabeth Bowen's 1938 novel, The Death of the Heart, as a teenager in the 1980s. I have a feeling that my mother might have been studying it when she did HSC English as an adult.

The Death of the Heart is regarded as Bowen's best work. Sixteen year old Portia comes to live with her half-brother and sister-in-law in London after the death of her parents, and finds herself lonely and adrift in a social world whose rules she struggles to comprehend. Frankly, her sister-in-law Anna is a bit of a selfish bitch, who reads Portia's diary and makes no attempt to welcome her; her brother is at a loss; Anna's erstwhile toyboy, Eddie, is a self-absorbed dick who can't resist flirting with Portia. The only person in the household who seems to have any real relationship with poor Portia is the maid, Matchett, inherited from Thomas and Portia's father.

This is an incredibly sad novel, in which various isolated and self-loathing or bewildered characters orbit around each other without ever making any real contact. The figure of Major Brutt, in his shabby hotel, imagining he's friends with Thomas and Anna, is absolutely heart-breaking. The one character I couldn't feel too sorry for is the 'charming' Eddie, whose company I couldn't bear even for a few pages; of course Portia falls in love with him, but he's such a pretentious little shit, I felt like throwing him across the room. 

It's possible that I didn't finish reading The Death of the Heart the first time around, because I found a possible bookmark wedged in its pages about how to care for ear-piercings, which would have to date from 1990 (so slightly later than I first thought). If that's the case, I only made it about a third of the way through. 

Plainsong

I had never come across the American author Kent Haruf until my friend Elizabeth put Plainsong into my hands. What a revelation! I'm not usually drawn to American novels, but I was completely won over by Haruf's spare, deceptively simple prose, which matches the austere landscape of (fictional) Holt County, Colorado.

This is a very cinematic novel, though the action is mostly subtle, with occasional bursts of violence. We are never told how characters feel or what they're thinking; instead, we witness their words and actions and make our own interpretations. Haruf takes 'show, don't tell' to the extreme, but it works beautifully across a range of characters, who are all isolated in their different ways, and who end up interacting unexpectedly. A pair of elderly brothers on their remote farm; a pregnant teenager; middle-aged teacher Tom Guthrie, whose wife has withdrawn and finally left him with his two young sons; warm, humorous fellow teacher, Maggie Jones, who is the catalyst who brings the McPheron brothers and young Victoria together.

Plainsong is true to its title -- unadorned, no fuss, but deeply moving. Elizabeth has promised to lend me two more Haruf novels and I can't wait.

Nest

I am a huge fan of Inga Simpson's writing (her novel Willowman and memoir Understory are just so beautiful), but for whatever reason, her second novel Nest didn't quite do the trick for me. Perhaps this quiet, reflective, observational novel suffered from being read simultaneously with big, blustery King Sorrow; perhaps it was my state of mind, where I was looking for distraction rather than meditation. Perhaps even the very short chapters, which is something I usually enjoy, meant that it took a long time to make my way through the story, to the point where I'd sometimes forgotten characters or events by the time they were referred back to (did I mention my concentration is not great at the moment?)

The actual writing and the nature observations were as usual absolutely gorgeous, in fact I think I would have enjoyed Nest more if it has been presented as a piece of nature writing or memoir rather than a novel. There is hardly any plot, and what there is, moves slowly and quietly. There is a missing child, harking back to a missing friend of Jen's own childhood; an absent father, an unsatisfactory ex. But these are elements that hover around inside Jen's head as memories and speculations, rather than playing out on the canvas of the novel. Gradually, very gradually, tense loner Jen starts to unfreeze, through her close relationship with the trees and birds on her land, tending to her house and garden, and her tentative friendships with the townsfolk and neighbours, and her drawing pupil Henry. The novel ends in quiet hope, but anyone looking for high stakes drama will not find it here. 

I think I would have loved this book more if I'd been in a different frame of mind! I have another Inga Simpson novel on my pile, but I might wait a while before I open it; I want to meet it in the right spirit.

King Sorrow

It's been quite a while since I ventured to read a 900 page brick of a book; my attention span hasn't been up to it. King Sorrow was like reading four normal sized novels strung together, but it's a real roller coaster ride. It's the story of six friends who summon a dragon from another realm, ostensibly to do their bidding, but of course, as in all the best fairy tales, it turns out that they end being in his thrall. Every year they have to choose a victim for King Sorrow, or else one of their own lives will be forfeit, and inevitably a lot of innocent victims fall prey along the way (dragons are not known for their restraint).

To start with, King Sorrow reminded me of The Secret History -- a group of college students negotiating a dreadful secret, and the intra-group politics and shifting loyalties and betrayals that play out over the years that follow. But there's also a terrifying mid-air adventure, a chilling conspiracy and abduction episode, and a mythic quest for a magical sword, led by a troll deep underground. All this before the final confrontation. King Sorrow is also a fascinating meditation on the power of imagination and reality. 

I probably wouldn't have picked up this book if I hadn't heard it recommended on the ABC's Book Shelf program, but it was fun to explore something off my usual track. Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, and has evidently inherited his father's gift for story-telling. I did have to renew it as I was ploughing through, luckily there wasn't anyone else on the library's waiting list.

The Impossible Fortune

How lovely to be back with the Thursday Murder Club gang again! Though I must admit that the Netflix movie has irreversibly influenced the way I picture the characters now -- and there was a nice cheeky reference to Pierce Brosnan being the best James Bond (which may be the case, but he still isn't quite how I imagined Ron). 

Sinking into The Impossible Fortune was like stepping into a warm bath -- totally comforting and nourishing, and exactly the kind of book I feel like reading at the moment. My only complaint was that there was not quite enough Bogdan; mind you, there are so many gorgeous characters milling about Coopers Chase by now that it's hard to give them all full air time. There are some lovely Joyce-Joanna moments in this novel that make up for it.

The Impossible Fortune takes our octogenarian crew into the world of Bitcoin and old-fashioned 'cold storage,' a service providing physical storage in an age where digital security has become vulnerable. There are explosions and secret codes and double crossing, but there is also another parallel plot involving Ron's daughter and grandson which is less showy, but possibly more important.

I know the Thursday Murder Club can't live forever, but please, can they have lots more adventures before we have to say goodbye?
 

Helm

I feel like there's been a bit of a buzz around Sarah Hall's novel Helm, which is centred around the only named wind in the UK (I must admit I hadn't heard of Helm and didn't realise that it was a real thing: a unique, powerful, occasional force). It's such a cool concept for a novel and Hall has constructed a rich narrative of interweaving strands through the history of human interactions with the wind. Hall has given Helm a wild, poetic voice, and it has motivations and desires of its own, which adds a distinctive flavour to the novel.

For me, some of the narrative strands were more successful than others, though Hall has obviously expended a lot of effort in creating authentic and researched stories for each time period. Most of the narratives are focused on attempts by humans to tame or measure Helm: a medieval churchman who sees Helm as a demonic force; a Victorian scientist who wants to set up an elaborate machine to dye the air flow; a modern climate scientist who becomes paranoid in isolation; a Bronze Age wise woman who sees a sacred stone in a vision and dedicates her life to finding and erecting it. Often the protagonists are women who develop a special relationship with the wind, like Janni, a victim of 50s psychiatric treatment who is eventually reclaimed by Helm as Helm's own.

I especially loved the Janni story and the Bronze Age narrative, perhaps because they both came to a satisfying conclusion. Some of the other plotlines petered out or ended anti-climactically, but there is more than enough meat here to compensate, and the actual prose is rich and wild and gorgeous.
 

No Fond Return of Love

No Fond Return of Love (1961) is a minor Barbara Pym work, and I think it might have been the last one published before the long hiatus which led to Quartet in Autumn in 1977 and her rediscovery by a new audience of fans. It's not her best work, but it features the usual cast of middle-aged spinsters and attractive clergymen; there are also some young people floating about. There is a strong sense that the world is changing and that these young people are inhabiting quite a different reality from their elders -- where women are expected to work and live independently, rather than be content to perform volunteer 'good works' attached to some church, where they can go out drinking and dancing with relative freedom.

But even a second tier Barbara Pym is worth reading, for comfort if nothing else, and I am in the mood for comfort reading. It's so relaxing to escape into a world of seaside boarding-houses, sherry before dinner, pink velvet hats and jumble sales for the organ fund. It's a small, self-contained world, untroubled by politics or protests or violence or passion -- even love, though a disruptive force, is still obliquely expressed and sensibly regulated. It's weird that the momentum of the novel, such as it is, is provided by Dulcie becoming a kind of stalker of Aylwin Forbes, who she's met briefly at a conference: she checks out his brother's church, she goes to stay at his mother's hotel. And ultimately it seems that her obsession is going to be rewarded, which is perhaps not the best message! Dulcie and her eventual friend Viola are freelance indexers, and the original title of the book was A Thankless Task, which in some ways fits it better.

The Jane Austen Book Club

I'm not at all surprised that Karen Joy Fowler's 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, became an international bestseller and was made into a movie. I checked out the trailer and was disappointed that I only could only recognise a couple of the characters, so I suspect they were cast without close reference to the book. I don't think the movie performed all that well. The novel, on the other hand, was a delight, easy to read, with subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to Jane Austen's novels, without assuming an intimate knowledge of Austen in the reader.

Fowler presents us with six characters, mostly middle aged ladies, but including one younger daughter and one bloke. The bloke, Grigg, is a lot of fun -- he is a computer geek whose first literary love is science fiction, and who has never read any Jane Austen before. The ladies' initial bristling suspicion of him is lovely, and I adored the scenes where he and Jocelyn meet -- he is at a sci fi con and she is at a dog breeders' conference, and there are some gorgeous crossed wires. 

There is a section at the back of the book where Fowler gives synopses of each Austen novel, and a hilarious collection of reviews, starting with Jane's own family and friends and moving through two hundred years' worth of admirers and detractors. I doubt anyone would approach this book unless they were already a Janeite, but fans of Austen will find comfort and pleasure in these pages. 
 

My Sister the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer probably isn't the kind of book I would normally pick up, but my interest was piqued after reading a recommendation on a book thread where someone was looking for novels from different countries (I think they were aiming to read a book from every country in the world). I'm very conscious that my reading pool of nationalities is tiny, so I made a note of Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel and found it at the Athenaeum.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is no mystery story -- the very title gives it away, and the first page begins with a murder, clearly not the first. The tension in the story comes from wondering if the narrator Korede will keep covering up for her homocidal sister, or betray her to the police; and from the imminent danger to Korede's crush, kind and hunky doctor Tade, who has the hots for Ayoola. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a very easy and engaging read; I flew through half of it while giving blood. The chapters are short and punchy, the action is swift. In some ways it reminded me of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, in that it does provide some plausible excuses for Ayoola's behaviour, and I really enjoyed the glimpse into Nigerian culture (albeit an upper class, 'nice' family). I wouldn't exactly call it a fun read, but it's effortless and very enjoyable, so far as a novel about a serial killer can be, and it does actually have some serious observations to make about intergenerational violence and co-dependent relationships.
 

Taboo

West Australian Noongar author Kim Scott has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I've shied away from his novels, fearing they might be too harrowing for me. But I was persuaded to pick up his 2017 book, Taboo, by my book group friend Cathy, and I'm so glad I did.

Tilly is a schoolgirl who's recently discovered the truth about her Aboriginal parentage; she finds herself caught up in a kind of cultural camp for Noongar people, returning to their Country after a long exile and horrific history which has rendered that place forbidden until now. The narrative about the adults exploring their heritage, tentatively recovering language, making traditional tools and painting, singing old songs, enveloping young Tilly in a family she's never known, is extremely moving. But there is deep darkness in the story too, not just in the form of past massacres, murder and rape, but in the present, between vulnerable Tilly and sinister Doug, who is also connected to the community.

Taboo contains both horror and humour, and a touch of magic realism that weaves First Nations spirituality through a gothic, haunted story. The book ends with the hint that eventually Tilly will make peace with both sides of her inheritance, despite all the pain that has come before.
 

Clock Dance

Anne Tyler is one of those reliable authors where you always have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get, and you can relax in the knowledge that you're in safe hands while you get there. (I'd put Noel Streatfeild, Agatha Christie and Eva Ibbotson into the same category.) In one respect, Clock Dance departs from Tyler's usual MO -- instead of revolving around a nuclear family, or a couple of generations, this one consists of a few mostly unrelated individuals who end up forming a kind of chosen family.

Willa has two grown up sons, with whom she has little contact -- not because of conflict, they've just drifted apart. Widowed young, she's on her second husband, an honourable but pedantic and unbending man. Peter is most put out when Willa is unexpectedly called to the rescue of her son's former girlfriend and her young daughter, but he heroically accompanies her from Arizona to Baltimore so that Willa can step in. However, his willingness to be a hero is strictly limited and soon Willa finds herself torn between competing duties.

Clock Dance is a really sweet read. Willa is quite a passive character, but I recognised a fellow Phlegmatic type -- averse to conflict, resisting through inaction, a calming presence. It's lovely to see her gradually being appreciated by this bunch of neighbourhood strangers, even as her supposed nearest and dearest dismiss and overlook her. At the end I almost stood up and cheered.
 

The Blessing

I found this omnibus edition of three of Nancy Mitford's novels in a secondhand book shop. I already own a very well-thumbed copy of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate so I just bought this for The Blessing, which oddly I have never owned and I don't think I've read it since high school (a long time, anyway!)

The Blessing, while not reaching the comedic heights and poignant depths of the other two novels, stood up very well, though I expect I would have got more out of it if I knew more about French high society in the 1950s. Womanising Charles-Edouard is of course yet another portrait of Gaston Palewski, this time elevated to a dukedom and terrifically handsome. Despite being married to beautiful, languid, easy-going Englishwoman Grace, he can't keep his eyes or hands off other women; the central cultural conflict of the novel lies between the worldly, sophisticated French attitude to these affairs, and the uptight priggish English intolerance of such behaviour.

All through the story, Grace is urged to adopt a kind of radical acceptance of Charles-Edouard's roving eye, even when she catches him in flagrante. It occurs to me that Charles-Edouard could equally have exercised some radical self-control, but hey. The real villain of the piece is the couple's young son Sigi, who shamelessly manipulates them both to keep them apart and enjoy the fruits of their undivided attention. I have no idea what the contemporary attitude to extra-martial affairs is in France these days, but I suspect it might be a little less forgiving that it was in 1951. 

Daydreamers Anonymous

I was so desperate to read this novel that I broke my strict no-purchases-through-Amazon rule -- it was literally the only way I could access it. Samantha Rose Parker has published (I suspect self-published?) Daydreamers Anonymous, the story of Clara, who is thirty five and a compulsive daydreamer. Stuck in a boring office job, living in a basement room in an unsatisfactory share house, Clara's real life unspools inside her head. But she knows she can't go on like this, and she joins a support group, led by the charismatic Dr Hill, who claims to have cured himself. As the back cover blurb says, Clara 'meets her people, but she's not exactly sure she wants them to be her people: there's Jax, who lives a double life as a detective; Bob, who has an invisible family, and Janice, who's been married to Tom Cruise in her head for 30 years...'

Confession time: all through my teens I was a compulsive daydreamer, just like Clara. There's one character in Clara's support group who fantasises herself as 'Dr Who's assistant,' which is pretty close to the content of my own parallel life. It's not going too far to call this kind of daydreaming an addiction. Whenever I  had the chance, I'd slip into my inner narrative, assuming an alter ego who was smarter, prettier, braver and more lovable than me. I had one friend at school who also had an active fantasy life; she's the only person (apart from one therapist) with whom I've ever discussed what my friend and I dubbed 'etcetera.' Like Clara, I genuinely felt that my secret life was my true life and the most important thing about me; the outer me was just going through the motions. And like Clara, I realised that this was a dangerous path. When started uni, I tried to give up cold turkey -- it was the hardest thing I've ever done, and it took a long time to shake the addiction. I've relapsed from time to time, but I seem to have lost the urge, maybe even the ability, to lose myself in daydreams like I used to. And I'm honestly kind of sad about that. I could easily have ended up like Clara, and I'm glad I avoided that fate, but there's a loss and grief there too.

Daydreamers Anonymous obviously had a special resonance for me, but it's a funny, moving, poignant novel in its own right, with no easy answers for what is a genuine psychological problem. 

The Names

I think I first heard about Florence Knapp's debut novel, The Names, on The Bookshelf on Radio National, and I was immediately hooked by the premise. In 1987, Cora is taking her newborn son to register his name, and on the way she tosses up between three alternatives -- Gordon, the name of her overbearing husband; Julian, her own preference; or Bear, the choice of her young daughter, Maia. The narrative then splits into three strands, each following the the consequences of a different naming decision.

I already have a weakness for names, and I love alternate timelines, so this was an instant must-read for me. I had to wait for months until my reservation came up at the library, and there are 144 people waiting behind me (they have to wait a little longer, as my daughter is currently reading it, and she doesn't normally read fiction, which again testifies to the appeal of this novel). The Names is a hugely readable and engaging story which nonetheless explores some big questions about fate and destiny, family violence, the power of small decisions, loyalty and money and power. The Names is a wonderful example of strong domestic fiction -- it deals relationships within one small family, but it spirals out to encompass a wider field thanks to the three parallel storylines. I did read one review by a person who apparently launched into the book without realising what was happening with the structure and was initially bewildered, but I honestly can't believe they could have been confused for long.

I whipped through The Names in a weekend and it would be a terrific recommendation for reluctant (adult!) readers.

EDIT: My daughter absolutely loved it and can't wait for the inevitable movie.
 

The Women

I should start by saying that a lot of people really love this novel. The Women by Kristin Hannah has over a million 5 star reviews on Goodreads, and it came in high on the Radio National book countdown -- particularly since it hasn't benefited from a film or TV adaptation. It deals with meaty, emotional subject matter -- the experience of American women, specifically nurses, during the Vietnam War, women who suffered physically and psychologically and yet had their experiences dismissed and were frequently told 'there were no women in Vietnam.'

Having pointed out all that, I have to admit this book was not for me. I found it melodramatic, often implausible, and not very well written. There was a lot of telling, not showing, in this novel. Frankie's close friendship with her fellow nurses, Barb and Ethel, seemed very one-sided -- several times, Barb and Ethel drop everything to fly across the country and support Frankie in her many crises, yet Frankie never seems to offer them any support in return. We are told how strong and important their friendship is, but we don't really see it. Frankie's mother has a stroke, from which she makes a full recovery -- this serves no purpose except to fill up a few years of plot time. Every man that Frankie meets falls in love with her. I can handle one character miraculously coming back from the dead, but two strains credulity.

I can see that the strong, eventful story would pull readers rapidly through this novel, and I thought the early sections, dealing with Frankie's war experiences, were vivid and punchy, but for me, after she returned home, the story trailed away. I wish Kristin Hannah all the best and clearly many, many readers adore her work -- and The Women is indeed a story that deserves to be told. This just isn't the version for me.