Not So Quiet...

By Helen Zenna Smith

Book Overview

" A] bittersweet feminist antiwar novel . . . Brilliantly written, and cleverly mixing humor with bitterness" (Library Journal).

Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times for its "furious, indignant power" and winner of the Prix Severigne in France as "the novel most calculated to promote international peace," this story offers a rare, funny, bitter, and undeniably feminist look at war and its effects on all those who take part.

First published in London in 1930, Not So Quiet . . . follows a group of British women ambulance drivers on the French front lines during World War I, surviving shell fire, cold, and their punishing commandant, "Mrs. Bitch"--even as their parents swell with pride that their girls aren't shirking their duty to king and country.

Taking the guise of an autobiography by Smith--a pseudonym for Evadne Price--Not So Quiet . . . is a compelling counterpoint to Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel's power comes from Smith's outrage at the senselessness of war, her own daily contact with the suffering and the wounded, and at her country's complacent patriotism and willingness to sacrifice its children.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 093531282X
• ISBN13: 9780935312829
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Feminist Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Johnny Got His Gun from a feminine standpoint

I found this book to be absolutely riveting. I have always been interested in female involvement in World War I, and this book tells in a very accessible way what it was like to be in the "Forbidden Zone" during this truly horrific war. It reminds me of Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun in that we see the VAD's struggling to keep their sanity in terrible circumstances. Well worth reading.

Eyeopening and Edgy

WWI, somwhere in France, freezing, exaushted and lice ridden Britain's upper class young women are "doing their bit" for England. This is a remarkable story, telling the experience of female ambulance drivers in the first world war. The subject matter is graphic, and the language which describes it is poetic and enchanting. It sucks you in to the madness, sleeplessness, and monotany of horror that goes on everyday in Smith's life. It is an excellent read and although fiction, it is based on the diaries of an actual female ambuance driver.

Women and War

In Europe during wartime, well-to-do young women were recruited to be ambulance drivers, and very few of these women knew what they were getting into. Smith takes us just behind the front lines and deep into the lives of several of these women. More a story of courage, suffering, and survival than tale of war itself, it parallels the more well-known All Quiet On the Western Front, and was intended as a response from the women's side. Unapologetically and realistically detailed, it will take you away to a time and place that you will remember long after you've finished the book.