++1/2
Significant for spawning the lesbian pulp genre, important for its authentic depiction of lesbians (the novel is based on the author's experiences as a member of De Gaulle's London-based Free French Forces during World War II), but, for all that, a rather banal and depressing read. Told by a fly-on-the-wall narrator, it is about the women of a Free French barracks, each of whom is seeking her own version of love and acceptance. Yes, there's a war going on and, yes, these are patriotic women, but as Torrès points out, until the Normandy Invasion, which doesn't occur until the very end of the book, it was often difficult for the women to feel that they were actively engaged in the war effort, despite the military discipline and largely because of their routine administrative jobs. That left them to the cultivation of their social lives, which, rampant same-sex liaisons notwithstanding, come off as messy and dull. It didn't have to be this way, but Torrès, alas, is much better at writing about emotional characters than writing emotional prose, and her ideas are hardly revelatory. Too much memoir and too little fiction, we are left with character sketches that tantalize yet never fully materialize. One of the big takeaways here is that this book that was published as pulp in America but not written as pulp is lesbian pulp through and through: do not expect a happy ending. Reprinted in the early aughts by the Feminist Press, with amusingly hypocritical reference to the book's bestseller status, when, of course, the vast majority of those millions of copies sold were bought by men seeking this new brand of titillation.
Significant for spawning the lesbian pulp genre, important for its authentic depiction of lesbians (the novel is based on the author's experiences as a member of De Gaulle's London-based Free French Forces during World War II), but, for all that, a rather banal and depressing read. Told by a fly-on-the-wall narrator, it is about the women of a Free French barracks, each of whom is seeking her own version of love and acceptance. Yes, there's a war going on and, yes, these are patriotic women, but as Torrès points out, until the Normandy Invasion, which doesn't occur until the very end of the book, it was often difficult for the women to feel that they were actively engaged in the war effort, despite the military discipline and largely because of their routine administrative jobs. That left them to the cultivation of their social lives, which, rampant same-sex liaisons notwithstanding, come off as messy and dull. It didn't have to be this way, but Torrès, alas, is much better at writing about emotional characters than writing emotional prose, and her ideas are hardly revelatory. Too much memoir and too little fiction, we are left with character sketches that tantalize yet never fully materialize. One of the big takeaways here is that this book that was published as pulp in America but not written as pulp is lesbian pulp through and through: do not expect a happy ending. Reprinted in the early aughts by the Feminist Press, with amusingly hypocritical reference to the book's bestseller status, when, of course, the vast majority of those millions of copies sold were bought by men seeking this new brand of titillation.