The Soldier's Wife

Joanna Trollope is a wonderful writer of women's fiction, but she doesn't seem to push the boundaries of the genre these days. Really good women's fiction touches your heart and makes you believe in the reality of the characters as you're reading, as Joanna Trollope does, but plain good fiction requires more complexity, more layers, more probing than we get in this story about a woman dissatisfied with her life as the wife of a soldier in the British Army. Joanna Trollope is still the Queen of the Aga Saga, and this is excellent women's fiction, but it seemed a little rushed and more focused on the marriage vs. career debate than on developing the characters.

In The Soldier's Wife, Joanna Trollope deals with a difficult subject--that of 21st century repeated tours of duty in a combat zone. These multiple deployments have various negative affects on not only the person sent to such dangerous duty in a foreign country but also on the loved ones left behind. Trollope apparently created her story based on scores of interviews and not on any military service of her own or that of anyone close to her. But this story needs to be told and I commend her for tackling it. I wish I could put a copy of The Soldier's Wife on the desk of every politician who thinks we should continue this insane series of Middle Eastern conflicts.

In this book, we are introduced to British Major Dan Riley, who is returning show more from a grueling 6-month tour in Afghanistan, his third. At home, his wife Alexa waits with their three children, torn by apprehension and mixed emotions. She has been through this before. Alexa's major concerns are perhaps the weakest part of the novel. Her worry over her daughter's unhappiness at boarding school, and her own frustration at not being able to accept a teaching job "because we will soon have to move" seemed overblown to me. However, once I accepted these reasons as valid to this modern-day Army wife, the Riley's ensuing fractured family situation seemed legitimate. Dan's obsession with his men and his friend Gus, also a returning officer with the battalion, turn out to be sufficient reason for Alexa's anxiety. Each time Dan runs off to headquarters or comes in late because he has to check on Gus, she has plenty of cause to feel left out of his inner circle. Dan is so filled with what has happened to him, the injuries, deaths and mental breakdowns of his men, that he doesn't have enough emotion left over to deal with his family's problems; by comparison, perhaps whatever they are, these problems must seem very minor to him. I find that understandable. As the story progresses we meet several generations of family, all of whom get involved in this unhappy reunion that seems heading for a train wreck. The author uses a series of friends to depict events from the past which help to describe Dan and Alexa's background and personalities. Friends and relatives all struggle to understand what's happening between Dan and Alexa and want things to be right again. Through men in Dan's battalion we realize that subjection to repeated hazardous combat tours can result in serious bonding with their mates (as the Brits say) in a way that overshadows even the ties that bind a family into a unit. (These harrowing multiple separations from loved ones are relatively new to military life as we have known it, although there were some cases of it during the Vietnam conflict. Today it is routine.) Trollope gets this point across through the characters George and Eric Riley, Dan's father and grandfather, both retired military men whose marriages ended unhappily, yet they both realize the Army is asking far more of its soldiers today than in the past. Both urge Dan to give his wife the attention she deserves, to listen to her, to talk to her about his feelings. In the end, only Dan and Alexa can put their lives on track for a future together. I have to admit the attempt to portray life within a military community falls a bit short of the mark, but what these two people have suffered by repeated separations in their marriage comes through loud and clear.

This is the first Trollope novel I've read, but I plan to read another. I picked it up because of the title and the subject matter. Perhaps some reviewers who are critical have no background in military life. I thought the subject well chosen and well presented. As I said at the beginning of this review, this is a story crying to be told. Thank you, Joanna Trollope. show less

Maybe 3.5 stars. This is at its heart a perfectly competent Joanna Trollope novel. It delivers most of the things a Joanna Trollope fan has come to expect in her books. It is somewhat reminiscent of Trollope's [b:Rector's Wife|201227|Rector's Wife|Joanna Trollope|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309201412s/201227.jpg|1533887]in that at the centerpiece is a woman whose own dreams and ambitions are thwarted by the expectations and restraints placed on her by her husband's career. The difference though is that in The Soldier's Wife we are told rather than shown most of the constraints on Alexa. I know a little bit about the life on a military base from a friend of mine--although she is American--and the Pressure to Conform is palpable, show more nearly from all sides, but especially from the other wives and families. In The Soldier's Wife first of all while the need to conform was clearly understood by everyone, it wasn't shown. Secondly, virtually everyone--the wives, his husband's superiors, her parents, her in-laws--was sympathetic to Alexa's situation even though most just assumed she would ultimately "go along to get along". When she missed an important event to address a situation with her daughter at school, I thought "Well, now she's going to be hounded by questions and comments from all sides," but instead there was hardly any mention of it after the fact.

As I said, still a pretty satisfying Trollope novel although I think The Rector's Wife did a more interesting job with much of the same material. show less

Maybe 3.5 stars. This is at its heart a perfectly competent Joanna Trollope novel. It delivers most of the things a Joanna Trollope fan has come to expect in her books. It is somewhat reminiscent of Trollope's [b:Rector's Wife|201227|Rector's Wife|Joanna Trollope|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309201412s/201227.jpg|1533887]in that at the centerpiece is a woman whose own dreams and ambitions are thwarted by the expectations and restraints placed on her by her husband's career. The difference though is that in The Soldier's Wife we are told rather than shown most of the constraints on Alexa. I know a little bit about the life on a military base from a friend of mine--although she is American--and the Pressure to Conform is palpable, show more nearly from all sides, but especially from the other wives and families. In The Soldier's Wife first of all while the need to conform was clearly understood by everyone, it wasn't shown. Secondly, virtually everyone--the wives, his husband's superiors, her parents, her in-laws--was sympathetic to Alexa's situation even though most just assumed she would ultimately "go along to get along". When she missed an important event to address a situation with her daughter at school, I thought "Well, now she's going to be hounded by questions and comments from all sides," but instead there was hardly any mention of it after the fact.

As I said, still a pretty satisfying Trollope novel although I think The Rector's Wife did a more interesting job with much of the same material. show less

Maybe 3.5 stars. This is at its heart a perfectly competent Joanna Trollope novel. It delivers most of the things a Joanna Trollope fan has come to expect in her books. It is somewhat reminiscent of Trollope's [b:Rector's Wife|201227|Rector's Wife|Joanna Trollope|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309201412s/201227.jpg|1533887]in that at the centerpiece is a woman whose own dreams and ambitions are thwarted by the expectations and restraints placed on her by her husband's career. The difference though is that in The Soldier's Wife we are told rather than shown most of the constraints on Alexa. I know a little bit about the life on a military base from a friend of mine--although she is American--and the Pressure to Conform is palpable, show more nearly from all sides, but especially from the other wives and families. In The Soldier's Wife first of all while the need to conform was clearly understood by everyone, it wasn't shown. Secondly, virtually everyone--the wives, his husband's superiors, her parents, her in-laws--was sympathetic to Alexa's situation even though most just assumed she would ultimately "go along to get along". When she missed an important event to address a situation with her daughter at school, I thought "Well, now she's going to be hounded by questions and comments from all sides," but instead there was hardly any mention of it after the fact.

As I said, still a pretty satisfying Trollope novel although I think The Rector's Wife did a more interesting job with much of the same material. show less

I enjoyed this. Young men often fight wars whose purpose they often do not understand nor do they care about. The bonds between them are what matters. Even after they return on leave, hanging out with their mates can take precedence over family time.

Alexa Riley is trying to cope with being a soldier's wife and the sacrifices that entails - turning down work, being alone with her children, only having other army wives as company - when her husban Dan returns from 6 months in Afghanistan and proceeds to spend all of his time with his army buddies. The book is very moving and seems to depict the effects of modern day war and army policies on modern society, particularly that of the spouses who are assumed to be the supportive selfless creatures of the 1960's. I really like Joanna Trollope and this is another good one by her.