A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries [Paperback]

Kaylie Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Based on the author's own experience growing up in Paris with her famous father, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries chronicles the moving story of the growth of a family. The adored only child, Channe finds her perfect world impinged upon by the adoption of a French brother, Benoit, whose own origins are mysterious. She is both fiercely resentful and protective of her new sibling, having to share with him her parents' love, particularly her father's. With the revelation of the truth of her brother's parentage, Channe becomes obsessed with his mysterious past and begins to confront the ghosts of that long-ago sibling rivalry. This inspired novel explores the complex and volatile relationship between a brother and sister who learn to love and respect each other for what they were as children -- and what they have become as adults.
-- This novel was met with glowing reviews when it was first published in 1990, including the Los Angeles Times, People, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews.
-- The movie will star Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Hershey.
-- This fall, FOX will release a movie version of The Thin Red Line, which will rekindle interest in the life and work of James Jones.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The daughter of James Jones here offers a discerning, brightly written, apparently semiautobiographical bildungsroman. Channe Willis, the daughter of an eminent American novelist and his loving wife, grows up happy and spoiled in Paris. One day, her idyllic bubble is burst when her parents adopt a young French boy her own age, whose foster mother has committed suicide. Jones ( Quite the Other Way ) captures Channe's waspish jealousy of Billy and her protective feelings for him that blossom against her will. A sexually promiscuous loner who is too dependent on her Portuguese nanny, Channe gropes her way through an adolescence whose pain is exacerbated by her father's heart disease and the Willises' return to America when Channe and Billy are 15. Although it explores Billy's sexually repressed birth mother's motives for giving him up for adoption, this novel is, above all, an elegy to a father-daughter bond that transcends death. Channe's father is almost too good to be true: he celebrates with Channe her first menstrual period, lets her high school boyfriend sleep with her under the Willis roof, and turns Channe on to literature ("My father told me about the souls of books, how they came out of the writer whole, like babies with their own separate souls").
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Jones's third book, a delightful account of Americans living in Paris, captures the essence of childhood. Growing up in a loving, if sometimes bizarre, family, Channe Willis becomes a sister when her parents adopt Benoit, a French boy. Each sibling must struggle to adjust to the new situation; later, returning to America, they struggle simply to belong. As Channe progresses toward adulthood, her significant relationships involve her father, her Nanny Candida, teachers, boyfriends, and finally the brother she had so much trouble accepting. Jones, the daughter of James Jones, writes with sensitivity and compassion. Highly recommended.
- Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Perennial; 2nd edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060977558
• ISBN-13: 978-0060977559
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,383,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've published five novels, including A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES, CELESTE ASCENDING, and SPEAK NOW. My newest book is LIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME, my first memoir. I am the only daughter of the novelist James Jones, who wrote the WWII trilogy FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE THIN RED LINE, and WHISTLE.

A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson, Leelee Sobieski, Jesse Bradford, Barbara Hershey, and Isaac de Bankole.

I chair the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. During the past 15 years, 12 of the winners have been published to impressive critical acclaim.

I teach creative writing in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University MFA program in professional writing.

I live in New York with my husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a book should be., April 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (Paperback)

I found this book to be a refreshing tale which blends the struggle to grow up with the urge to stay a little girl sitting on her father's lap forever. As I read this book, I felt myself being brought into Channe's world, and became part of the Willis family myself. I can't even call A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries a book. It was an experience.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of the artist as the daughter of a famous author, September 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (Paperback)

The book is more a series of autobiographical short stories about a girl growing up first in Paris then on Long Island. Her father, a famous author (perhaps a stand-in for James Jones), is a complicated yet loving man capable of tremendous fury and tremendous love. The stories themselves are typical coming-of-age narratives, but they're graced by Jones' clear style and by situations above and beyond the ordinary. Worth a read.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid and moving view of growing up in Paris as an American., November 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (Paperback)

I finished this book two days ago and have been unable to move onto other reading because this one still preoccupies my thoughts so. Like the author and her brother, my brother and I spent part of our childhoods in Paris in the 1970s and shared many of the experiences and settings the author describes. The book does strike me more as a collection of autobiographical stories than as a novel with a single narrative, but whatever its form, it is beautifully written and resonates deeply with me, as I know it would with anyone who has gone through that expatriate experience.