The Soldier's Wife

May 28, 2012
In Trollope's dull newest (after Daughters-in-Law), British Army Major Dan Riley has just returned home from a six-month stay in Afghanistan. His wife, Alexa, has been holding down the fort, juggling young twins and an older daughter, Isabel, who is desperately unhappy in boarding school. And though Dan is glad to reunite with his family, his homecoming is marred by his inability to readjust to civilian life. Dan spends the bulk of his time at the base with his best friend, Gus, whose wife has just left him, while Alexa yearns for a life apart from the Armyâone in which she can seek out her own career as a teacher. But with a potential promotion on the horizon, Dan struggles with the prospect of giving up a career that his father and grandfather before him proudly pursued, and to which he has become deeply linked. While the subject matter is timely and rife with possibilities, Trollope fails to adequately engage with the complexities of PTSD or the reentry of veterans into domestic life. Trollope's writing is consistent but consistently unexciting.

June 15, 2012
An English military wife has difficulty adjusting to her husband's return from Afghanistan. When Alexa's husband, Dan, a career British Army officer, returns from a six-month deployment in Afghanistan, she expects his re-entry to be awkward. However she's surprised when, instead of relishing his reunion with his wife, twin toddler daughters and teenage stepdaughter, he spends most of his time on base, helping soldiers in his battalion readjust from extended home leave. Alexa, who carries baggage from her own upbringing as the only child of distant parents in the diplomatic corps, can't communicate her frustrations to Dan without starting an argument. Compounding her plight, Alexa's daughter Isabel is a virtual outcast at her government-sponsored boarding school, where she's been accused of stealing from another girl. Alexa is also running interference on Dan's behalf with his father and grandfather (old soldiers themselves) because he's not ready to deal with his extended family. Worse, because of the uncertainty of Dan's next assignment, she's had to turn down a job with a private school that would have accepted Isabel. Instead of facing his marital difficulties, Dan brings his comrade Gus (whose wife, by walking out, has done what Alexa can only fantasize about) home to live until Gus weathers his rough patch. When Isabel goes AWOL from school and returns home, Dan and Alexa must confront the unstable core of their military family. Dan has apparently been affected by the horrors of battle, but aside from ducking at the sound of a woodpecker and talking in his sleep, this has to be one of the more muted descriptions of post-traumatic stress in modern post-warfare fiction. Trollope is less than sure-handed in her handling of this subject matter, preferring to prevaricate with endless and repetitive dialogue and rumination about the challenges of re-entering the democratic society and domestic tranquility soldiers are sworn to protect. The couple's emotional reckoning is more thoroughly articulated later, but the tedium of getting to that point is daunting. Eminently skimmable.

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May 1, 2012

The best women's fiction uses domestic life to illustrate changes in the world as Trollope's best-selling novels (Daughters-in-Law; The Other Family) do, although her realistic middle- and upper-middle-class characters rarely face insurmountable difficulties. Her latest portrays family life on a British army base, highlighting the changing expectations of women in the traditional role of soldier's wife and touching only lightly on national politics, foreign affairs, and the horrors of war. Just back from an adrenaline-filled tour in Afghanistan, Dan Riley still feels more army major than family man. Trying to understand, his wife, Alexa, is tense and unhappy; daughter Isobel misbehaves at school; and the younger children act up at home. Worried friends and family, standing by, can't decide how or whether to intervene. VERDICT The noticeable absence of swearing, sex scenes, and controversial topics places this story about a rough patch in a marriage squarely in the women's fiction genre, but its nuanced writing, multigenerational points of view, and balanced presentation of changing gender roles elevate it above the pack; recommended for Trollope's many fans.--Laurie A. Cavanaugh, Wareham Free Lib., MA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2012
Dan Riley has just returned from a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. At home are his wife, Alexa, their three-year-old twins, and stepdaughter Isabel. Alexa is familiar with the challenges of being a soldier's wife, including the unending household moves, Dan's constant exposure to injury or death, and the constraints of living a life under the army's thumb. She also knows that Dan's return will require a period of adjustment. But Major Riley is finding it difficult to return to family life. His body may be at home in Britain, but his mind is still on the battlefield. Alexa becomes increasingly desperate to make sense of her distant husband and their life in the shadow of the omniscient army. To make matters worse, the twins are a handful, and Isabel is working very hard to get kicked out of boarding school. Trollope's sixteenth novel addresses, once again, the complexities of modern family life. With her signature cache of universally appealing, well-shaped characters, The Soldier's Wife is a thought-provoking, timely look into the lives of soldiers, their families, and their homecoming from battle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)