I selfishly wish the book was written by a woman who was in the war and experienced it first hand. The author did a great job gathering research and using a personal diary but there are still moments and feelings that she will never be able to verbalize or even think about because she….. wasn’t there I fear. Not to diss her at all I understand this is a beautiful work of fiction that gives a female perspective I just, there are certain realizations and feelings you get from experiencing something like this first hand that you can’t fake and I think the book could have maybe felt more genuine and personal had we been able to see the true raw pain of someone who went through this, instead of the author at points almost guessing how they felt.
7 thoughts on “Sorry I talk too much. Not So Quiet new, updated opinion”
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I think this feeling could be argued and wanted for every book written by someone that wasn’t there. The emotions, feelings, and raw experiences from someone that lived and breathe these things will always be better in comparison. All in all, I do agree with you, having a female author that saw and lived through these things for herself would’ve made the emotions that this book puts off much more heavy hitting. Not to take any credit away from the book though as it’s still great.
I could not have said it better myself this was very good
I feel the selfish want to make this 100% true. However, I kind of still abide my arguement of it being “pulp fiction” without the pure focus being Queer being bad, but rather War nurses. I think anyone can write a heartfelt book that is authentic, but at what cost is the authenticity if that is handled like Pulp Fiction: a fiction that depicts trauma of nuses bad. However, its a pulp fiction aspect is makes some passages absud like magic carpet and the waterbottle stuff. Again.
Although I do want to ask, if the author was a man and not a women, at the time, would the “authentcity” be questioned more, less, the same? I wonder if that is true
also do not apologize for wanting to yap, that just means you really want to talk about a topic.
I honestly felt like the waterbottle scene was great. She’s tired, grumpy, sleep-deprived, and then grateful for the act of kindness, and she’s so emotional that everything is a big deal to her.
I feel like we are judging her a little harshly; if a man who hadn’t been in the war did research and wrote a book, we wouldn’t question it so much, I think. Also, there is far more room for personal interpretation of events than we realize, and different accounts might have things we find jarring or “unrealistic” because they don’t match our narrative of the war and its effects, but was someone’s opinion or experience.
Honestly, Fair, I wasn’t trying to state that the water bottle scene wasn’t accurate, but rather the intensity of everything was escalated to 1000% to the point it felt absurd. However, I didn’t really think about personal interpretations being part of our narrative. I think one of the reasons why there is personal interpretations more than All Quiet is possible the idea of a Unrellliable Narrator. Paul I think had Unreliable narration moments, but here it might defintly be more considering that Nellie is uppercrust and Paul is lowercrust and must be matter of fact numb like asolider vs. always ragging about something (note these two feelings will intertwine with both solider and nurse I think). we are still reading in a new book and so far 3 chapters is not enough to fully be trusted on my analysis thus far.
Hi thank you very much. I personally would still definitely be questioning the authenticity or maybe genuineness of the book even if it were written by a man about men. To me, it just feels different. But what do I know.
I absolutely agree.
I know in class we talked about how this was normal for the time, using a pseudonym, but people still do it today. J.K. Rowling sometimes writes under a pseudonym, authors will pick a pen name if their real name sounds like an already established author’s, they do it to sound more masculine, or even just because they don’t like their name. I just think the difference is it’s a name attached to the book that doesn’t insist this is a memoir.
I feel like it would be super different if Evadne Price just did a ton of research and wrote something completely fictionalized, but that’s a different topic.
Also flipped to the back and found out she turned this into a series of Helen Smith books, and I’m kind of left feeling like this was more for profit than getting the story out, because why four, five books when just this one packs such a punch? Feels kind of like modern day cash grab attempts, but I could be completely wrong.