The Women is (only) Half of a Great Book

 

 

The Women (2024)

By Kristin Hannah

St. Martin’s Publishing, 480 pages

★★★

 

U.S. troops left Vietnam 51 years ago, yet what the war meant continues to haunt. The debates are so intense I am reminded of what has been said of the Confederacy after Civil War. To paraphrase, if the South had fought with the vigor with which it erected monuments to its “heroes” after the war, it might have won. Like the Civil War, the Vietnam conflict is shrouded in anger, politics, myth, lies, and half-truths.

 

It takes courage to write about Vietnam and no-win foolishness to review such a book. Kristin Hannah has such a devoted following (me too!) that unexamined praise is a given. Now to jump into the fire. The Women is half of a great book; it’s also half of a mess. I was shocked, though, that many reviewers tagged it “one woman’s struggle to….” It’s nothing if not a paean to intense female friendships.

 

The Women opens in 1965, when Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a naïve nurse trainee from San Diego, shocks her parents by copying her beloved brother and enlisting to serve in the Vietnam War. As she repeatedly hears–even from military recruiters–women simply don’t go to war; heroism is for men! Frankie’s day one baptism of fire reveals the Army’s desperation, not her qualifications. She’s not ready for anything and no one cares. Hers is on-the-job training in life-and-death scenarios. Hootch mates Ethel and Barbara see her as new “meat” and couldn’t be more different from her. Ethel is a Virginia farm girl with a salty tongue and Barb an often-angry African American with no time for prissiness. That the three will later bond and become Frankie’s support group in numerous crises ought to put to rest any “one woman’s” story nonsense.

 

Vietnam forced men and women alike to grow up fast. This part of Hannah’s book is stunning. Think M*A*S*H with all the drinking, chauvinism, dark humor, and adrenaline, but with more drugs and little concern with who is winning the war. Doctors, helicopter pilots, grunts, and nurses hold a life-on-fast-forward mindset because death is all around. Hannah vividly answers the question of whether women can be heroes.  You need to read this section of Hannah’s novel to appreciate just how precarious and wrongheaded life and the military mission were in Vietnam. Even a good girl like Frankie ponders whether it’s worthwhile to hang onto her virginity or believe anything officials say after visits to Vietnamese villages, witnessing the Tet Offensive, and withholding treatment from soldiers certain to die.

 

Alas, the weighty gut-churning sections of life in-country give way to cliches, flag waving, stereotyping the counterculture, and catastrophizing of life outside of ‘Nam. Could we please bury the rant about no parade for Vietnam vets? How could there be? America: (a) left before the war was over, (b) sent new GIs to fight long after others were discharged, (c) lost the war. If Afghanistan vets get a parade it will be a case of more guilt than celebration. There’s no need to celebrate military branches (or politicians) who wasted and/or traumatized young lives with impunity. 

 

Hannah falls prey to dubious facts and makes curious character choices. She shows little love for the counterculture, yet several of her characters jumped on board. War critics included Vietnam Veterans Against the War whom I echoed in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. It’s also time to lay to rest several other Vietnam myths. Few on the homefront were blissfully unaware of the war, though very few vets (if any) were spat upon by antiwar protestors. It might have happened somewhere, but Jerry Lembcke couldn’t confirm any incidents when he wrote The Spitting Image. Other writers remind us that vets did not come back to the States on civilian aircraft and were not required to wear uniforms when not on base. As Lembcke noted, these myths came from movies; most protestors sided with vets and demanded, “Bring the boys [sic] home.”

 

Hannah dazzles highlighting the horrors of war and the ineptitude of the VA, but her throw-in-the-kitchen sink approach in part two weakens the connective bonds of her novel. There’s entirely too much one-sided patriotism at play. How about less flag waving and more attention to avoiding needless flag-draped coffins? Like legions of others, Frankie was a foul-mouthed, substance abusing, lovesick, PTSD puddle when she returned home. Luckily she had close female friends to guide her.

 

Rob Weir