Requiem for a Wren

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I liked the main character. I really wanted to like the female lead character, but she frustrated me by her giving up in the end because it seemed so unlike her character (from the way she acted in the past). As I said this was my second Nevil Shute book and what amazed me again is that in both the books, his women characters are super strong and totally amazing. You've got to read this book to know what she does in Army and how. Imagine a broad shouldered girl with a square face who claims she isn't much of a beauty but what she does with Guns is something everybody watches with their eyes popping out. One unfortunate mistake in the course of the war for which she is never blamed by anyone changes her life for good. Where that episode leads her and how it all ruins her life to no repair is the story is all about. Heart-breaking yet a emotional roller coaster ride of the three amazing characters and their friends and family is totally out of this world experience. Nevil Shute's stories are totally smooth and his narrative is just so gripping yet simple that I found the book to be totally unputdownable as my heart kept asking me to go forward and solve the riddle. Plus I wanted to race to the end to know how it all ends. As I said it was one of the most emotional stories that I ever read, it is very tough to point out the moments it made me super emotional. The entire journey of one brother to find his dead brother's lover touched me deep inside, every-time his search fails, my heart cried out. Also the girls struggle after her loss and after so many deaths, the point where she finally loses something which makes her cry for the first time was the moment my tears just rolled out, unable to control the barrage. Wow, that was just wow moment and I feel totally out of words to explain why and what I felt at that moment. If you read the book, you will certainly know and agree with me on that.

Acronyms and technical military, nautical and aeronautical terms, as well as terms for weaponry and arms, frequent the text. This adds a sense authenticity. The author doesn’t define these terms but with the help of adjacent explanations lay readers come to understand what is meant. The is well done. However, in expressing things several times and in different ways there is quite a bit of repetition which is at times annoying. Too often a reader is told of events rather than experiencing and living them firsthand, as they occur. This is what you need to know about the author’s writing style.

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While the story is more or less revolved around the narrator/protagonist, a good part of it is spent on the story of the wren officer, Janet Prentice. With slow accuracy, Alan brings to life Janet, and her story wins the reader's sympathy. Her life is weighed by grief and guilt, and the resulting PTSD completely unmans her. Life afterward is nothing but just a struggle for survival, which battle she loses at the end.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-02-01 18:13:36 Boxid IA40009921 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Requiem for a Wren is a sad story of the consequences of those servicemen/women who served in WWII. War may be over, but for them, it'll never be over. The ghosts of the past haunt them, the guilt weighs them, and an unexplainable restlessness possesses them. They know that they must put the past behind them and adapt to civil life as best as they could. But this is not easy. Yes. I like Nevil Shute's writing. I think A Town Like Alice is his best work so I would always recommend that title first. I do think he is very good at describing life in the British Armed Services during WWII. Those that enjoy military history and writing will like his books, but even I enjoyed them (and I have little knowledge of planes and guns). My spouse and I have been watching a program called Foyle's War. It's essentially a British cop show, but set in WWII. It's a wonderful show, but it got me started thinking about WWII-era things, and I decided to dust off this gem from the past.

Though this is somewhat a sad story, it is a hopeful one as well. Alan Duncan, though considerably changed by his war experience, comes to terms with his life and adapts as best he could. He pursues his studies which were left unfinished and comes home to settle for good on his parent's sheep farm in Australia. Although Alan doesn't find love in the quarter he seeks, there is hope for him in another quarter. I was delighted to have the opportunity to reacquaint myself with one of the favourite books of my youth. urn:lcp:requiemforwrenla00nevi:epub:1a4d7a45-5995-43bb-9fe2-f99e54d29d04 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier requiemforwrenla00nevi Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6g203847 Invoice 1213 Isbn 0708984428 Oddly enough, one of Shute’s biggest failings is one of the things I love about his work. As I have noted previously, and as Kim notes in her review of On the Beach, Shute’s writing cannot be called elegant. In Kim’s words: Nevil Shute was extremely popular in the 1940s and 50s. He wrote in a straightforward, highly readable style on subjects that he knew about. Thus it is not surprising that there are quite a few technical references in this book, especially to equipment used in the Normandy landings of 1944 (Shute, an officer in the RNVR, was actually present at D-Day) but these are easily comprehensible to the ordinary listener. The atmosphere and tension of those weeks before the invasion is very well caught.

Shute also tends to write in a fairly stilted manner, using phrases that seem ridiculous —“The breakfast came upon the table”— and referring to characters by their nationality or occupation —“The Australian”, “The scientist”, “The Commander”— which grate with constant repetition. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2014-08-07 16:32:57.577853 Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA1146308 City Leicester Donor I suppose the best modern term to describe these war veterans is "adrenalin junkies". The war is over and everything is now an anticlimax. They queued to get into the Korean War and were turned down. What can they do and what don't they end up doing?Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL9722439M Openlibrary_edition The Breaking Wave is one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II. Albeit sad, I can accept Janet’s inability to love and marry anyone other than Bill Duncan, Alan’s brother. With Alan’s return home, that she chooses suicide makes sense to me too. Alan’s love for Janet never felt genuine to me, and his decision to marry Viola Dawson isn’t drawn convincingly either. Shute reveals the end at the beginning, but only part of it, the devastating part. A young woman's suicide that seemingly has no rhyme or reason starts the returning home Aussie pilot on a journey through his past. The attention to detail is fantastic and the reader learns much about the nitty gritty of maintaining the gunnery parts of British WWII ships. I had no idea that there was such a thing as Ordinance Wrens in the War. They were an integral part of the War Effort and they suffered as much of what we know now as PTSD as any of the soldiers that saw action.