Publisher’s summary: It is 1916, and a woman awakens, wounded, in a field hospital in northern France. She wears the uniform of a British nurse’s aide but has an American accent. With no memory of her past or what brought her to this distant war, she knows only that she can drive an ambulance, and that her name is Stella Bain.
As she puts her skills to use, both transporting the wounded from the battlefield and ministering to them in hospital tents, the holes in Stella’s psyche gnaw at the edge of her consciousness. At last, desperate to find answers, she sets off for London to reconstruct her life.
She is taken in by Dr. August Bridge, a surgeon who becomes fascinated with her case and with the agonizing and inexplicable symptoms that plague her. Delving into her deeply fractured mind, Bridge seeks to understand what terrible blow could have separated a woman from herself. Together, they begin to unlock a disturbing history — of deception and thwarted love, violence and betrayal. But as her memories come racing back, Stella realizes she must embark on a new journey to confront the haunted past of the woman she used to be.
In a sweeping, dramatic narrative that takes us from England to America and back again, Anita Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, and about loss and redemption in the wake of a war that devastated an entire generation.
My thoughts: I really liked how Shreve focuses on the experiences of women during World War I and acknowledges that they might not have been in the trenches but still put their lives on the line and suffered the consequences. By telling the story from Stella’s point of view when she has no memory, readers see how the war took its toll on her, and through her drawings, Shreve emphasizes the complexity of memory. The novel is about more than the war and shell shock; it is about the difficulties women faced when they sought independence from the confines of marriage and home. I might have loved this book, but the ending was a bit flat, though satisfying overall.
Disclosure: Stella Bain is from my personal library.
© 2015 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.
Flat but satisfying ending..hm
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It wasn’t the powerful ending i’d come to expect in Shreve’s novels, but I was satisfied with how things turned out for the characters.
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The reviews have been mixed on this one, and my copy still remains unread, even though I have read everything by this author —except this one:(
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If you enjoyed her other books, you should definitely give this one a try!
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I agree with you on the ending – it kept me from loving the book.
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At least I was able to overlook it and really liked it overall. It would’ve been a five-star book if the ending had packed more of a punch, though.
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I have been curious about this since it came out. Anita Shreve used to be an auto-buy and read for me, but not in a few years. Hopefully I will get a chance to read this.
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I enjoyed this one more than the last one I read by her. I can’t think of the title off the top of my head; it wasn’t very memorable. I’ll still read whatever she publishes, though. There’s only two of her novels I haven’t read.
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I really like Shreve’s work, but this ending did lack a punch — but I think it was incredibly satisfying for the characters.
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The rest of the book was so well done that I could overlook the ending. I’ve read so much Shreve that I was just expecting more.
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I have not read any of her work yet! Thank you for your honest mini-review, Anna.
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I’ve read all of Shreve’s books except for the two that were released before this one. I really enjoy her work.
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I’ve seen this one around and despite the ending, it sounds very good.
I’m back to blogging btw, little by little 🙂 I’ve missed your blog!
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I’ve missed yours! Will have to pay a visit as soon as I have a chance.
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I haven’t had much luck with WWI books. If the ending fell flat for you I think I will skip it.
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It was satisfying in terms of the characters’ fates, but it just didn’t pack a punch like Shreve’s endings usually do.
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