I read The Women by Kristin Hannah (see my blog on one of her other bestsellers The Nightingale) in July, having long been fascinated by the history of Vietnam (see my blogs on Reading Vietnam and A Hundred Suns) and knowing nothing about the experience of women nurses that this book follows.

The section on Vietnam is visceral and a hard read and clearly shows how the death and destruction of the war affected the Vietnamese people and the American soldiers. It leaves the female nurses living with constant trauma and constantly on the edge of exhaustion and breakdown, and inclined to take what pleasure they can in each other’s deep friendships and in falling in love.

The novel then moves back to the California and follows Frankie as she returns home, not to a hero’s welcome but to hostility, shame from her parents and a world of privilege she no longer wants or understands. Left without help to deal with her grief for the men she has lost, she spirals from one disaster to another before finally finding meaning again.

I found this part tricky, as the same plot device is used twice and it feels like a history of what veterans went through more than a novel. I was glad to find that others share this experience of the book. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating read.