Reviews with content warning for Forced institutionalization - The Women

Reviews tagging 'Forced institutionalization'

The Women by Kristin Hannah

89 reviews

shanreadit's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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skylarkblue1's review against another edition

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sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

To start with: There is no named Vietnamese character, Frankie's whole life is dictated by men and she only just follows men around, the book seems to think Vietnamese women only wear áo dàis and completely ignores the Vietnamese women who fought in the war and even supported Americans (in more ways than just serving them Jack Daniels...).

Frankie is a rich, spoilt brat who's main goal is just to have her father proud of her. Her whole life is dictated and saved by men, and there's no point where she breaks out of that. In fact, even at the end of the book, she's still chasing men. She's really not likeable, and despite the book trying SO hard to *tell* you she's strong, she really doesn't feel like that. Veterans have an incredibly high rate of homelessness and are unable to get medical care in any regard. Frankie has 0 issues with any of that, she never has money problems, she's gifted homes, and easily gets medical care.
The rest of the characters feel really 1 dimensional. And there's no even half-way decent man in the story - except one, who's treated really badly by Frankie honestly.

This book seems to pack in every single tragedy it can, it's kind of impressive and if you played a drinking game where you take a shot for every tragedy your liver absolutely wouldn't exist afterwards. The amount of tragedies is about the same as the amount of wild coincidences. What do you mean Frankie just happens to be in the right place at the right time every single time for every situation? What do you mean that some random-ass person gets news about an event with Frankie's family before Frankie does just a couple days after said event (while halfway across the country??)? Even the ending with the love interests gets fucking insane quickly with the sheer coincidences and also overused tropes.

Every single lazy writing trope you can think of, is used here. It's all telling and not showing, everything works out for the protag without much issue at all, so much padding and overused tropes and it's just a mess honestly. I went into this without reading anything about it, or knowing anything about any of her other books, but it seems like a few of the plot beats in this are repeated in multiple of her other books as well..

There is no subtly, no nuance and no proper consideration done towards the country and culture of Vietnam. There's no actual Vietnamese characters, and from what I can tell no Vietnamese people mentioned in the acknowledgements either. Which is kind of wild because it seems like there was actually a decent amount of research done into what the American life was in the army and such over there and coming back home. The PTSD portrayal was also somewhat decent - even if there was more focus on the spiralling and substance abuse than how she got better...
The book doesn't even try and tackle the issue of America being the one fucking over everyone in the war that hard. Yes it does mention that a bit, but it's more in off-hand comments and doesn't really try and *actually* talk about it - instead it just changes topic to romance more often than not.

I think this really sums up what I feel is wrong with "feminist fiction" honestly. Trying far too hard to try and go "look, women strong!" without really saying.. why? Or even just actually writing men like they're a person and not just a sole personification for the patriarchy.

Maybe if you want to write a petty messy romance, don't use the Vietnam war as just a atmospheric backdrop.

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haley49's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I want to start by saying this was a story that needed to be told. There is not enough literature on Vietnam and this book really explores the erasure of female vets, the treatment of vets, ptsd, addiction and the futility of the war. I appreciated it all.

However, for some reason I went into the book expecting multiple povs and instead got one, very limited pov. I would’ve wished we could’ve had the perspective of a Vietnamese woman and/or a black woman nurse. We see some of this through Frankie’s friend Barb but we are always told not shown things and it made any commentary about racism or classism feel shoehorned in. Plus, the fact that there were no named asian characters is a miss in my opinion. The only perspective about the war is shaped by people tired of the deaths of American soldiers with civilian casualties largely ignored. The author tried but it was a matter of needing more perspectives.

Connected to the problem of needing more perspectives is the fact that Frankie always has a love interest. It was like whack a mole. For a book called the women and only telling one’s story she spent a lot of time centering her story on men. It was not super interesting or new and took valuable page time away from women and the war-related themes. There are multiple points where romantic love is used as a fix-all for main character’s problems. It became melodramatic for a book that is not a drama or a romance.

All of the above issues didn’t make me hate the book but I would have made some changes. Again I did appreciate the themes, mention of historical movements, Barb’s character, the main friend group, and how much Frankie earned her future happiness. The author made her regress before her progress and I appreciate that in a character.

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wormgirl's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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twigaonabike's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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smcrain's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Kristin Hannah does it again. Another very compelling, emotionally gripping read. I loved The Nightingale, but I equally enjoyed this one, perhaps even a little more? It's hard to say as memory is fickle, but either way this was definitely another five star read from me.

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eftucker11's review against another edition

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dark informative sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The story gets dragged along kicking and screaming by Hannah, a writer who seems incredibly eager to show you something but doesn't want your gaze to linger too long. The plots weaves and winds from trauma to trauma as our main character, Frankie, struggles to cope with her experiences during and after the Vietnam War. Hannah seems terrified to slow down and take her time with a few key moments instead of bombarding the reader. This leads to the plot whizzing by in a whirlwind so rapid that it dulls their impact.

On top of that, her descriptions of the different settings from the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands of Vietnam, to the sunny coasts of southern California, are all formulaic. They offer paper-thin window dressing that is quickly tossed aside as we race from plot point to plot point.

The focus on romantic subplots also distracts the central plot and muddles its messaging. While it's understandable that a young woman, away from home for the first time and surrounded by young men, would feel attracted to some of them, the emphasis the story places on it drags attention away from the suffering of the Vietnamese people, and the American servicemen and women. The final pages of the story completely encapsulate what I'm talking about, but I won't specify why to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say, our main character's romantic troubles persist throughout the book, and wax and wane between being central to the story and off in the periphery, despite the fact that this book is meant to be a story about experiencing and recovering from the horrors of war. It reads like a cheap addition meant to tittilate the reader, but serves little purpose aside from, once again, traumatizing the main character.

Also, the depiction of the main chracter as a victim of war trauma is riddled with clichés that would have been more tolerable were they not repeated so many times. After the third or fourth time the main character recounts a terrifying war story to a horrified listener, again, the event loses its impact.

The story shines best when Hannah writes about the sisterhood of the nurses, coming together to support each other during and after the war. Of course, a huge segment of their time gets skipped over so the main character can go back to enduring hardships. The excessive focus on the traumas the character suffers ultimately overrides their purpose, making the reader turn away out lf exhaustion instead of sympathizing.

It was a quick read which I'm unlikely to repeat, and I wouldn't recommend it to others.

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