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A review by catherine_louise
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally
3.0
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. Technically, it's nearly flawless: tightly plotted, well-researched, with well developed main characters (the Durance sisters) and a good mix of supporting characters. The writing, too, is smooth, sometimes lyrical. Keneally knows how to turn a sentence on its ear, although sometimes he goes for the more obscure metaphor when a simpler description would be more evocative.
Most of all, he avoids much of the "men marching off to war" trope that's so common in other historical novels; a lesser writer might overgeneralize the war as pointless fighting waged by rash and petty generals, who duped naive young men into fighting and dying (these men, who only joined because they wanted an adventure, nothing more, nothing less). Alternatively, shows like Downton Abbey never quite show the impacts of such traumatic fighting on the psyche of those who fought it; in the show's universe, the war is forgotten once it ended. But here, the brutality of the war is rendered with much nuance and empathy to offer a fresh take on the period.
However, I didn't find it compelling, truly compelling, until well past the halfway mark, which is surprising given all the technical merits of the book - there's something about the writing that feels rather distant. Sally and Naomi don't come into their own as characters until around the halfway point, and until then, it's very difficult to really care about them, meaning that the first half of the novel drags, instead of pulling you in. I'm not sure if this is intentional on Keneally's part - for example, he often opts for "Sally saw a man standing in the corner" instead of "A man stood in the corner," a choice that feels very much like telling instead of showing - and if it is, I still haven't figured out the reason for it. Or perhaps it's just clumsy writing, I'm not sure.
I'm glad I didn't give up on this book, since it has a lot to offer - but it was not the tour de force that the reviews promised.
Most of all, he avoids much of the "men marching off to war" trope that's so common in other historical novels; a lesser writer might overgeneralize the war as pointless fighting waged by rash and petty generals, who duped naive young men into fighting and dying (these men, who only joined because they wanted an adventure, nothing more, nothing less). Alternatively, shows like Downton Abbey never quite show the impacts of such traumatic fighting on the psyche of those who fought it; in the show's universe, the war is forgotten once it ended. But here, the brutality of the war is rendered with much nuance and empathy to offer a fresh take on the period.
However, I didn't find it compelling, truly compelling, until well past the halfway mark, which is surprising given all the technical merits of the book - there's something about the writing that feels rather distant. Sally and Naomi don't come into their own as characters until around the halfway point, and until then, it's very difficult to really care about them, meaning that the first half of the novel drags, instead of pulling you in. I'm not sure if this is intentional on Keneally's part - for example, he often opts for "Sally saw a man standing in the corner" instead of "A man stood in the corner," a choice that feels very much like telling instead of showing - and if it is, I still haven't figured out the reason for it. Or perhaps it's just clumsy writing, I'm not sure.
I'm glad I didn't give up on this book, since it has a lot to offer - but it was not the tour de force that the reviews promised.