The Alice Network

 

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Although it’s a very politically incorrect statement to make, The Alice Network is obviously a book written by a woman. That’s not a complaint, merely an observation.  As a man, I found I enjoyed it overall, but the overall feeling of the book was not really what I come to love and enjoy about reading novels; especially one that might be deemed a “spy novel”.  After reading the book, I can’t help but consistently wonder how much better I would have enjoyed the book had the story been told a bit differently.

We start in 1947 post-war Europe. Charlie St. Claire is a 19-year-old unwed pregnant girl.  Her posh, upscale mother is taking her to Switzerland to see a doctor who will take care of her “little problem”. Pregnant women with no wedding ring were quite the abomination back then. However, Charlie soon ditches her mother somewhere in England and decides to go look for her cousin Rose in France. Rose disappeared during WWII, and Charlie is so infatuated with her cousin, that she needs to find the truth. Is Rose possibly still alive? Charlie has one lead - a crochety older woman named Eve who drinks whiskey for breakfast and seems in a persistent state of surliness. We soon learn that Eve was a spy for the allies in the first World War, and we hear her tale as well. This book alternates chapters between 1947 Charlie and 1915 Eve.

Other than the fact that Eve is present in 1947 along with Charlie and the quest to find her cousin, we initially don’t see much of a connection between their two stories. We know their must be one, so we keep reading.  Once the connection is established, I found the “ah-ha” a bit lukewarm. This might be due to the fact, as I’ve stated, that I wasn’t too thrilled with overall way the story was told.

This is a very introspective, reflective book.  For every one page where we read about something actually happening, we have to read four or five pages about how Charlie or Eve felt during the time.  It’s a bit much and it can get especially wearisome when one of our two leads is having some sort of romantic encounter.  Again, maybe more woman enjoy this, but I really wanted more “doing” and less “reflecting”.

Consider one part of Eve’s story. One of her espionage episodes reveals something that’s about to happen that has the potential to be a huge game changer in the war.  Once the event happens (or doesn’t happen) it’s incredibly anti-climactic and barely any page space is devoted to the event and why things happened the way they did.  It almost seems as though the author is forcing this event into her story just to giver her characters a backdrop so they can spend more time talking to each other.  Although Eve’s story takes place during the majority of the time during World War I, the last two years of the conflict are all crammed into one chapter.  Without giving the plot away, this one chapter really had the potential to shine and highlight the life of a female spy during the war, yet author Kate Quinn seems to arbitrarily throw this time period in her book just so she can hurry up and get on with more episodes of “feelings”.

Although we do eventually see a connection between Charlie and Eve, I felt the novel would have much better without having to read about Charlie at all. It almost seemed like the author had two different ideas for a story, couldn’t flesh them out as much as she would have liked, so she decided to paste them together into “one” story.  Charlie’s travails were simply uninteresting to me.  Sure, we’re supposed to feel sorry for a lost, unwed, young girl living in a time well before women’s liberation, but I simply never cared.  She loves her cousin Rose. She borderline idolizes her.  It seems like all we hear Charlie talk about is Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose.  So we’re told of this infatuation, but I never quite understood why.

I would have much preferred this story to only be about Eve as a spy during World War I. I think with a bit more care, it could have easily been fleshed out into a much larger, much more interesting story. It was definitely tough being a female spy, but I would have preferred to experience what she was going through a bit more than what the author revealed to us.  We could have easily gotten to the same conclusion without having to plod along with Charlie and her mundane thoughts, dreams, and wishes.

Again, my guess is more women will like this book than men.  It was enjoyable for me, but not really earth-shattering awesome.  I felt it could have been so much better. But maybe that’s the man in me talking about what men would like.

Asian Armageddon, 1944-1945

 

Asian Armageddon, 1944 – 1945 by Peter Harmsen

The final installment of the very satisfying trilogy of the Japanese conflict during World War II.  Each of these three books are a bit shorter than your average history / war book and they probably could be combined into one larger volume. I think, though, that the author decided to release each installment as it was written, so a future compendium of all three might one day occur. Although these volumes are short, they’re not TOO short. In fact, many would probably prefer the 250-page or so length.

The brevity has advantages.  This book, like its two predecessors is very easy to comprehend and never allows itself to get too bogged down in the weeds. Even though the book covers two whole years of the war, it moves quickly. The author does a very nice job of covering all the bases. The main focus here are the actual battles that were fought, Peter Harmesen keeps it high level and wisely includes plenty of maps so the reader can stay focused with the many unfamiliar locations.

Although the United States of America was Japan’s main adversary during the conflict, this book also includes the many conflicts with neighboring China as well as Japan’s colonization of the many nations in Southeast Asia.  Entire books could (and have) been written on the majority of “events” in this book, so if the reader is wanting more than author Harmsen’s somewhat brief chapters, it’s comforting to know that one’s knowledge doesn't need to be limited to only what is here.

There are many postwar reflections included; mostly from former U.S. and Japanese soldiers, so it’s nice to have a lot of firsthand reflections of the tragedies. There were portions of the book that were hard to stomach. We must never forget that Japan was an incredibly cruel adversary, and whereas war is always “hell”, this was an unbelievably demonic nation in how it treated its enemies.  The reflections on how the Japanese military treated its neighboring China during its initial conquest and how American POWs were treated makes one ponder how the U.S. could be so magnanimous once the war finally ended and the U.S. “took over” the nation of Japan.  It’s definitely one of highlights of the history of the United States.  Most other nations would not be nearly as forgiving.

Such atrocities make the dropping of the atom bomb(s) much more acceptable. True, such an event should never be looked at with glee, but based on the psyche of the Japanese enemy, there really wasn’t much choice.  The Japanese people didn’t comprehend the term “surrender” and were literally prepared to fight until the last man, woman, and child was killed.  So as horrible as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, one feels as though just as many lives, if not more, would have been lost had this been a conventional war that potentially could last several more years.  We must also remember that many of those fatalities would have been the numerous young U.S. soldiers who should have been back home hanging around the malt shop as opposed to fighting in the treacherous jungles of Southeast Asia.

I must reiterate, everything here is the “Cliffs Notes” version of the actual events which is Harmsen’s intention.  He covers an awful lot, but keeps his reflections manageable. I would conclude by saying if you’re unfamiliar with most of the details of World War II and are looking for a good primer to introduce you to conflict in the Japan theater, this book and the two before it would make an excellent start.