The Soldier's Wife

3.50 out of 5 (2 ratings)

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Format:: Hardback
Pages:: 320
Publisher:: Transworld Publishers Ltd
Publication Date:: 02 February 2012
Category:: Modern & Contemporary
ISBN:: 9780385618038

Description

Dan Riley is a major in the British Army. After a six month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. The outside world sees those reunions as a taste of heaven after months of hell. But are they? Can a man trained to fight adjust again to family and domestic life? And how will the family cope, if he can't? To what extent can Alexa, Dan's wife, sacrifice her own needs and fulfillment to support his commitment to a way of life that demands everything not just of him, but of her and the children as well? This novel takes a keen look at the home lives of the modern Army. What happens when love and a vocation collide, head on?

Reader Reviews

Showing 1-2 out of 2 reviews.

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.

3.50 out of 5

baystateRA
This is the story of Dan Riley a major in the army who is just coming home from a six month tour of Afgahanistan. He has a wife and three children he loves. You often see the pictures on TV news programmes of these reunions and think how pleased the family must feel to be reunited, but there is another side to the story which Joanna Trollope tries to show. Dan comes home and is finding it very hard to adjust to time as a civilian again. He is spending much time at the army base, and extra time helping out other soldiers with problems including his friend Gus, whose wife has just left him. He brings Gus home to stay at their house. Alexa his wife has been holding the fort and taking over respsonsibilites while he has been away and has things she would like to talk to him about but he is not there for her. Their oldest daughter is vey unhappy at boarding school and wants to be home with the rest of the family, and Alexa has a job she would dearly love to accept but feels so much tied down by the restrictions of army life. As for the rest of their families, they can see the problems between Alexa and Dan and how they seem unable to communicate, but feel shut out of their lives and unable to help. This was a good theme for a novel, and raised important issues, but i feel the characters need a little more depth to them, and a bit more detail was needed in the story.

3.50 out of 5

kiwifortyniner