Scan barcode
A review by corrie
Women's Barracks by Joan Schenkar, Tereska Torrès, Judith Mayne
4.0
Women's Barracks is the story of 5 young women who have escaped occupied France to join the Free French Army in London. Author Tereska Torrès gives a personal account of the daily lives of this diverse group of women as they live in the barracks on Down Street.
It is very much a product of its time and when it was published in the early 50ies it became quite the sensation. The modern reader will not bat an eye at what then was considered ‘shocking and immoral’, so don’t read it hoping for explicit scenes.
What I liked about it was the historical setting. How the French refugee women coped with life in war time London. The style of the book is heavy on the tell part. Maybe it’s because Torrès kept a diary (although she said she didn’t need it for reference because if was still fresh in her mind when she wrote it) but the narration felt somewhat disconnected. When I say it was a product of its time I meant that lesbian women were still seen as unnatural freaks and to be pitied. I felt that the (straight) author sounded somewhat preachy at times.
But in the back of the book was an interview from 2004 where it becomes apparent that the only way Torrès could get her book published at that time was if her narrative was changed up a bit.
”They were extremely worried about lawsuits over immorality and they felt it would make the book more “serious” if a girl soldier would have a sort of look at what goes on in a more moral vein. She would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. This is so bad. And this is so sad.” And, of course, I didn’t approve of this but Meyer wrote to me from New York to ask if I would mind if he added some narrative lines here and there to satisfy the publisher. And since he told me exactly how he would do it and since it really did not change the story, I said he could go ahead with it.”
She feels uncomfortable with the changes.
” I didn’t moralize at all. Today, I think the narrator is so untrue. She is supposed to be me and even her biography is not mine. She says she comes from a very bourgeois background; my family was a family of Polish Jewish artists who converted to Catholicism before I was born. And I was not allowed to tell my Jewish grandparents in Poland that I was a Catholic.”
Also her original manuscript was written in French and her husband (Meyer) wrote the English translation and started shopping it around in America while she was living in Paris. Even though the translation is literal and still true to the story I feel it suffered because of it.
f/f, m/f
Themes: World War II, London, the Blitz, French refugees, The Gaulle’s Army, boredom, sexual affairs, pregnancy, lesbian pulp.
4 stars
It is very much a product of its time and when it was published in the early 50ies it became quite the sensation. The modern reader will not bat an eye at what then was considered ‘shocking and immoral’, so don’t read it hoping for explicit scenes.
What I liked about it was the historical setting. How the French refugee women coped with life in war time London. The style of the book is heavy on the tell part. Maybe it’s because Torrès kept a diary (although she said she didn’t need it for reference because if was still fresh in her mind when she wrote it) but the narration felt somewhat disconnected. When I say it was a product of its time I meant that lesbian women were still seen as unnatural freaks and to be pitied. I felt that the (straight) author sounded somewhat preachy at times.
But in the back of the book was an interview from 2004 where it becomes apparent that the only way Torrès could get her book published at that time was if her narrative was changed up a bit.
”They were extremely worried about lawsuits over immorality and they felt it would make the book more “serious” if a girl soldier would have a sort of look at what goes on in a more moral vein. She would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. This is so bad. And this is so sad.” And, of course, I didn’t approve of this but Meyer wrote to me from New York to ask if I would mind if he added some narrative lines here and there to satisfy the publisher. And since he told me exactly how he would do it and since it really did not change the story, I said he could go ahead with it.”
She feels uncomfortable with the changes.
” I didn’t moralize at all. Today, I think the narrator is so untrue. She is supposed to be me and even her biography is not mine. She says she comes from a very bourgeois background; my family was a family of Polish Jewish artists who converted to Catholicism before I was born. And I was not allowed to tell my Jewish grandparents in Poland that I was a Catholic.”
Also her original manuscript was written in French and her husband (Meyer) wrote the English translation and started shopping it around in America while she was living in Paris. Even though the translation is literal and still true to the story I feel it suffered because of it.
f/f, m/f
Themes: World War II, London, the Blitz, French refugees, The Gaulle’s Army, boredom, sexual affairs, pregnancy, lesbian pulp.
4 stars