Justin's review
"Not So Quiet": Stepdaughters of War (Women & Peace)
by Helen Zenna Smith
Justin's review
"Not So Quiet": Stepdaughters of War (Women & Peace) by Helen Zenna Smith
Justin's review
rating:
bookshelves:
random-crap
Not So Quiet is an eloquent, moving, and graphic counterpart to Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Based largely on the diaries of ambulance drivers in World War I, Smith's novel is part fiction and part autobiography, describing the horrors of life as an ambulance driver, ferrying crippled men, wounded at the front, to field hospitals, traversing dangerous roads and risking death from enemy artillery fire and aerial bombardment. In addition, Smith excoriates the ignorance and inhuman callousness of civilians, particularly women, at the home front, attacking the mothers who gleefully send their children off to die in the trenches. Like All Quiet on the Western Front, Smith's book is a vital addition to the literature of World War I. However, as a side note, I am unsure exactly what makes this a feminist book. Perhaps it's my own ignorance of the feminist movement, but it seems that all Smith does, not to lessen the importance of her work, is to tell the story of Wor...more
