Sunrise glow through canvas panels.
Foul smell of gas gangrene. Men moaning all around her. Pandemonium and chaos.
She floats inside a cloud. Cottony, a little dingy. Pinpricks of light summon her to wakefulness. She drifts, and then she sleeps.
Description:
So wakes the heroine of Anita Shreve's' Stella Bain, in a French military field hospital during World War I. She is wearing a Voluntary Aid Detachment uniform, has minor shrapnel wounds on her feet, but is otherwise untouched ... except she has no memory of anything prior to her awakening.
No one else in the hospital knows who she is either or where she came from as she was dropped off in the middle of the night by someone with a cart. Even her name is a mystery. "Stella Bain" is a guess she feels sounds right to her and she takes it, but she is far from certain of this or anything else.
So who is she? With her American accent, what is she doing in France prior to the United States entry into the War? How did she get injured? And what will she do now?
Over the next weeks, vague pictures come into her mind and she is able to sketch them: a small garden; a broken-down cottage surrounded by ominous trees of a forest; a half-completed face of a man; and another man much more ominous. The significance of these pictures, even where she gained her ability to draw, remains unknown.
She does sense that she was once an ambulance driver, so takes on this dangerous responsibility for the field hospital while she tries to remember something, anything.
Then, she overhears a word, "Admiralty," which seems somehow familiar to her. During a leave, she feels it important to catch a transport to England in search of this place. But sickness overtakes her and the quest for the Admiralty and her memory (and name) must wait as she recovers in the home of a stranger and his family.
Stella Bain is a quiet, spare story made compelling by the strong personality of the narrator and her struggles to learn anything about her life prior to the field hospital. Sentences are short, and the tone is almost whispered even with the background of war and survival. The slowly unfolding mystery, the characters who play roles in her former life and those who try to help her, and the setting of France and England during the Great War each tug at readers with their hints of a much, much bigger picture.
This book is quietly compelling. It is never heavy-handed nor violent, but calm, collected, and so fascinating that it is very difficult to put aside. The bits and pieces of Stella's life tantalize her in their incompleteness like the beginning stages of a large jigsaw puzzle. To her, the first steps are impossibly hard, but somehow she retains hopes the puzzle (and her life) will become more clear and the pieces start to fall together. That is the hope of Stella.
Highly recommended for those who love mysteries, strong characters, love, and even the realities of World War I and the effects it has on soldiers, volunteers, and civilians.
Happy reading.
No one else in the hospital knows who she is either or where she came from as she was dropped off in the middle of the night by someone with a cart. Even her name is a mystery. "Stella Bain" is a guess she feels sounds right to her and she takes it, but she is far from certain of this or anything else.
So who is she? With her American accent, what is she doing in France prior to the United States entry into the War? How did she get injured? And what will she do now?
Over the next weeks, vague pictures come into her mind and she is able to sketch them: a small garden; a broken-down cottage surrounded by ominous trees of a forest; a half-completed face of a man; and another man much more ominous. The significance of these pictures, even where she gained her ability to draw, remains unknown.
She does sense that she was once an ambulance driver, so takes on this dangerous responsibility for the field hospital while she tries to remember something, anything.
Then, she overhears a word, "Admiralty," which seems somehow familiar to her. During a leave, she feels it important to catch a transport to England in search of this place. But sickness overtakes her and the quest for the Admiralty and her memory (and name) must wait as she recovers in the home of a stranger and his family.
Stella Bain is a quiet, spare story made compelling by the strong personality of the narrator and her struggles to learn anything about her life prior to the field hospital. Sentences are short, and the tone is almost whispered even with the background of war and survival. The slowly unfolding mystery, the characters who play roles in her former life and those who try to help her, and the setting of France and England during the Great War each tug at readers with their hints of a much, much bigger picture.
This book is quietly compelling. It is never heavy-handed nor violent, but calm, collected, and so fascinating that it is very difficult to put aside. The bits and pieces of Stella's life tantalize her in their incompleteness like the beginning stages of a large jigsaw puzzle. To her, the first steps are impossibly hard, but somehow she retains hopes the puzzle (and her life) will become more clear and the pieces start to fall together. That is the hope of Stella.
Highly recommended for those who love mysteries, strong characters, love, and even the realities of World War I and the effects it has on soldiers, volunteers, and civilians.
Happy reading.
Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
Highly detailed and well-written history of the causes, daily decisions, personalities, and outcomes of World War I. (Previously reviewed here).
Brockmole, Jessica. Letters from Skye: A Novel
Series of fictionalized, sensitive letters written between a young student and World War I soldier from America, and a recluse poet from the Isle of Skye. (Previously reviewed here).
