Daughters of Mars (Keneally) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Poignant...masterly...epic.... [Keneally] has rescued forgotten heroines from obscurity and briefly placed them center stage.
New York Times Book Review


A burly, captivating saga of Australian nurses on the front lines of World War I.... Inscribed with the stately, benign authority of an eminent tale-spinner.
Wall Street Journal


An epic, sweeping book.
LA Times


Magnificent… a stunning performance, full of suspense, searing particulars, and deep emotion.... The huge talents of Thomas Keneally are everywhere on display.
Guardian (UK)


The Daughters of Mars is the work of a master storyteller, sharing a tale that is simultaneously sprawling and intimate.
NPR


May be the best novel of Keneally’s career...a book that aims for, and achieves, real grandeur.
Spectator (UK)


Superbly exciting to read.... An unmissable, unforgettable tribute.
London Times


Not only is The Daughters of Mars one of the most ambitious novels in a career that stretches back to 1964, but it might even be the best… The result is something few other authors would aim for, let alone achieve: genuine grandeur.
Telegraph (UK)


A big and brutal book, a new prism through which to think about World War I...breathtaking...magnificent and almost magical.  There are moments of joy, of pleasure, that make you look up from their page for a while to arrest and savour their sensation.
Australian


The horrific butcher’s bill of WWI trench fighting, which took a toll not only on the wounded soldiers but on the doctors and nurses who tended to them, is at the heart of this moving epic novel from the author of Schindler’s List. The story is told through the experiences of two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses.... By again using individuals to humanize a larger story, Keneally succeeds in conveying the experience to his readers in a manageable way.
Publishers Weekly


Australian sisters Naomi and Sally Durance volunteer as nurses at the beginning of World War I.... [T]heir service is a testament to the scope of war, as the number and nature of casualties they treat range from shrapnel and bayonet wounds to gassing, trench foot, shell shock, and finally the Spanish flu. Along the way we meet an unforgettable cast of supporting characters.... Highly recommended. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal


Sally and Naomi Dorrance, grown sisters, aren’t particularly close. Personality ­differences nudge them apart.... Their world is opened drastically as they volunteer as nurses during WWI.... Their ship is torpedoed off the Greek islands, and the sisters’ survival of a sinking ship is perhaps the most compelling—and longest—scene in this lengthy novel.... [I]n the end, it is their nursing experiences, their having to face countless horrors of loss of life and limb, that become the true meaning of their sisterly bond. —Brad Hooper
Booklist


[A] Winds of War–like epic.... Naomi and Sally Durance are two sisters who join the Nursing Corps in 1915 and sail off to Gallipoli, where they witness terrible things... [O]n arriving at the Western Front....they discover "a dimension of barbarity that had not existed on Gallipoli...," namely the terror of gas warfare.... Keneally is a master of character development and period detail, and there are no false notes there.... [Fans will find] much to admire in Keneally's fast-moving, flawlessly written pages.
Kirkus Reviews