A review by mohawkm
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
3.5
I hadn't previously heard of the Red Cross effort to send essentially proto-food trucks into WWII staffed with women and serving donuts and coffee to Allied soldiers in Europe. It's an enjoyable way to read another historical fiction treatment of WWII, but this one was a little stiff. The dialogue in particular felt artificial, perhaps because the author built the story based on oral histories and had to pull together a narrative arc without much written material available about this branch of service.
Two main quibbles with the story itself: one, the characters say, early on in the book, that they don't want to be defined by their romantic relationships and yet the title is a reference to one of the two women's relationships. Two, the ending is indeed quite hokey, and feels unlikely - in 50 years, a lot generally happens, it doesn't ever really stand still.
There's one great line, however, from when the women are stationed in England that I hope I remember:
"Our lives are written in laughter and bicycles." How lovely of a thought, hopefully it can be true of many people in the world.
Two main quibbles with the story itself: one, the characters say, early on in the book, that they don't want to be defined by their romantic relationships and yet the title is a reference to one of the two women's relationships. Two, the ending is indeed quite hokey, and feels unlikely - in 50 years, a lot generally happens, it doesn't ever really stand still.
There's one great line, however, from when the women are stationed in England that I hope I remember:
"Our lives are written in laughter and bicycles." How lovely of a thought, hopefully it can be true of many people in the world.