A review by tessisreading2
Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres

4.0

This book surprised me: rather than being some sort of scandalous, poorly-written lesbian pulp novel, it's very much a product of the "thinly fictionalized account of women's lives and sexual experiences during World War II" genre. I'm thinking, for example, of Mary Wesley's Camomile Lawn, which caused such a scandal when she published it - World War II is, after all, the "grandparent generation" for many of us, and the idea of people screwing like bunnies during wartime isn't really congruent with that. This one, however, came out very shortly after the war, and included some detailed lesbian (and bisexual) affairs, as well as unwed pregnancies, illegitimate children, etc. The writing is actually pretty good - it's a very readable book rather than "great literature," but it's nowhere near as awkward as e.g. The Camomile Lawn. At the insistence of the American publishers, there was a bunch of moralizing thrown in about lesbianism and promiscuity, which bumped this down a star for me, but over all, a really fun read, albeit not what I was expecting.