Customer Reviews

War Brides

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a unique story of Australian women who by chance meeteligible and vulnerable American service men while the men arestationed in Australia during WWII. Each couple meet and hastily march to marriage encouraged and motivated by the events and times at the end of the war. Despite family members expressing objection, the story centers on 3 young women who take the plunge and board ship for America to start their lives with the husbands they only knew for the briefest time. Each of the women are different and what motivates their destiny becomes the essence of the story line. One must remember that during this time in women's history, a wife was expected to place their husband first, no matter the personal sacrifice. For all these women, the sacrifices are so costly, they are each pushed to the edge and are challenged in a foreign country to make the best of their situation. A somewhat slow novel in the beginning, the story developes and holds the reader to the end.

Following the end of WWII, three young Australian women meet en route to America, where they plan to join the American soldiers they've just married...

At 19, Sheila is the most naive and idealistic. The only child of fairly well-to-do parents, she's used to getting her own way. She has no idea about American geography, but she has a vague idea that the backwoods Virginia home of her husband Billy is somewhere near New York...

Dawn, who already lost one young husband due to the war, wanted to remarry in order to provide her little girl Faye with a father. Immediately pregnant with another child, she quickly learns that life with a career Army officer like Zac isn't exactly the picturesque cozy family she had pictured...

And Gaynor - the product of a shiftless, alcoholic mother's random liaisons - has grown up in poverty and neglect, vowing to better herself regardless of what it took. When young Ricky, stationed in Australia, immediately fell in love with Gaynor's beauty, she took advantage of his naivete and married into the Cunningham family money. She never imagined, however, to become so smitten with his suave father Richard...

The book follows the three women's lives throughout the next decade, taking them through happy and unhappy marriages, pregnancies, child-rearing, homesickness for Australia and various pivotal life decisions as they struggle to achieve what they've always considered "The American Dream." But, as Sheila, Dawn and Gaynor each come to realize, a dream is never like reality...

Battle's portrayal of post-WWII life is realistic and engaging, providing readers with a real literary treat.

A Major Disappointment! This is one of the "slowest" reads I've had in a long time. It felt like labor just to get through it. I kept putting it down to read other books that were much more interesting, so it took me five weeks to finish. I kept plugging away, because there would be a hint that it would pick up and get better, but it would slow back down again. It finally ended leaving me confused as to what happened to one of the main characters!

I wanted to read this book because of the subject matter... foreign women who married American GI's after WWII and immigrated to the USA. This story was written by the daughter of one such couple. It revolves around three women. But I found that the lack of dates at the beginning of chapters, or very little reference to time frames throughout the book as it jumped from character to character made the book hard to follow. For example, when it went back and forth between chapters on Dawn, it was hard to tell if one month or a year had gone by. Then at the end, it was almost as if the author realized the book was too long, or got tired of writing, and just decided to stop! We never learn what really happened to Gaynor.

I think this book would have been much more effective if the author had written about one character, even if it meant having a shorter book. Or written about three separate characters in three separate mini-books combined in one novel, but following that one character all the way through. Since these characters had very little interaction after the first chapter, that could have been the prologue and then had epilogue to wrap up any connections or to tell what happened to them later.

Over all - I would not recommend this if you want to read anything "interesting" or "quick".... so boring!

War Brides is the story of three Australian women who marry US servicemen, and journey to the start their new lives with their new husbands in a new land.

The book's title had so much potential and I looked forward to reading how these Australian women survived living on the other side of the world, without their loved ones, and relying on the support from one another in a foreign land.

Unfortunately, I found the novel nothing more than a soapy story of three women, who just happened to be Australian, who fell into different marriage situations.

What I thought would be a challenging and informative story, ended up being just a trashy cross between a Jilly Cooper and Harold Robbins novel, with the occasional Australian expression thrown in.

I found it a very disappointing read.

As a woman interested in the lifes of non-US women who married GIs during WWII, I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to connect to the lives of the characters and the troubles they go through. The character development is interesting. The book is an entertaining read - perfect for a holiday or just a break away from everyday life.

I like light fare for my bedtime reading and I like stories about women. This was perfect. A few pages at a time, it lasted me for months. Nothing deep that I have to "get something out of". I do agree though, that the ending left something to be desired.

I enjoyed reading this book all the way through. Well written and easy to read and characters that were believable. The era this took place is well remembered by me and I do remember boys and men coming home from the war with what we called "war-brides" and I thought how neat that was and so very interesting as I was 8 -10 years old at the time. What an adventure these brides must have had when I never went anywhere they had come from a "foreign country" all the way to our little town because of love. It turned me into a romantic and I guess I have been that way ever since. What happens to this group of war brides is totaling believable and well documented as you follow them through what they thought they were getting into and reality.

At the end of WWII, three Australian women leave all that is familiar (one without a backward glance, the others a bit more hesitantly) in order to start new lives with their American husbands. The stereotypes are here: The climber, the romantic with movies on her mind and stars in her eyes; the clear-eyed mom who has lost one husband and doesn't want to lose another. Their stories mingle and diverge at various points, and it's when this happens that the novel becomes quite interesting.

Unfortunately, characters are dropped at various points, as if Ms. Battle doesn't know what to do with them, and one of the characters receives no conclusion to her story at all. Very dissatisfying. Otherwise, the story ties up in a reasonable way, and touches on some universal issues: racism, money problems, newlywed problems and cultural differences. The choices these women face and the paths that they choose make for occasionally interesting reading.

In what is getting to be a real annoyance for me, this book was in need of a good proofreader. There were typographical errors throughout the volume, and this is inexcusable in a book from a publisher like St. Martins Press and from an author like Lois Battle. Sadly, it's not the first time I've encountered a novel that annoyed me by its lack of good proofreading and editing.

Overall, I give a qualified recommendation for the novel, though if you're looking to have the story tied up in a tidy bow by the end, you'll be left disappointed. Three stars for the telling, but a satisfying conclusion and good editing would have gotten it five.