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The Women
by Kristin Hannah
3.5 Stars
“We were the last believers, my generation. We trusted what our parents taught us about right and wrong, good and evil, the American myth of equality, justice, and honor.”
Kristin Hannah’s long awaited novel The Women is a fast paced dive into the world of nurses serving in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Frankie McGrath, fresh out of nursing school heads to Vietnam. She is thrust almost immediately into the chaos of treating mass casualties in a rapidly unraveling war. The first half of the book delves into her two tours of duty “in-country”. The second half shows us a world that rejects those that served. A society that doesn’t want to hear or acknowledge what was happening. This leads Frankie down a rabbit hole of shame and forces her to swallow her emotions as she tries to reintegrate into a society that she can’t understand anymore.
Throughout the book themes of feminism, family bonds, and deep friendships are explored. Set against the powerful backdrop of a gruesome war. A war that leaves Frankie questioning how she was raised, her government, and what role women truly are boxed into.
I am a Kristin Hannah fan but I find that with many of her novels I cannot connect with the characters or stories until well into halfway through – and then of course I am crying by the end. The Women was no different. Except this time I never really connected with the story. I found the characters very two-dimensional. You only knew surface aspects of all the side players. Even Frankie McGrath was not deeply developed. I also found the book to have a LOT of repetition. Not only in concept but in literal sentences. This was very distracting. The book overall felt like it was written quickly and was a very stereotyped surface rendition of a powerful topic. I appreciated her exploration of the post traumatic stress that soldiers face when coming home – something that no one could ever understand unless they had experienced it themselves. And she highlights the abandonment these soldiers felt and how they had no resources to get them through their time back.
While I am glad I read this, it was not Hannah’s best work, and I think this topic deserved deeper development.