Soldiers' Women

Good condition though spine has markings and fading - no dust jacket - has markings from use - due to differing weights in books, postage maybe adjusted at checkout.

Never have women in wartime been drawn more forcefully in all their diversities of character and behaviour with their men. For love is the essential theme of this novel, love and the need that prompts it: all kinds of love from the brutality of drunken lust to the tenderness of true sentiment.

The scene is an Australian coastal city where American and Australian soldiers are in transit to battle stations. Under the shadow of war, a brittle gaiety grips the city; racketeers and brothel-keepers flourish; young girls become soldier's molls; wives betray their absent husbands; and there is still a core of sanity. Both the sane and the insanely squalid aspects of this city's life are shown in a fascinating kaleidoscope of characters whose destinies are intricately linked in explosive drama.

Writing with passionate sincerity and considerable insight, Xavier Herbert has given a picture of life in the raw: seduction, drunken orgies, rape, murder; and he has also shown a very beautiful harbour-side city where normal people live graciously and retain the standards and ideals that are natural to them. It is the brilliant vividness of the writing, the eye for the fantastic amid the sordid, the unconquerable humour of the ironist, that give the novel its inimitable flavour.