Paulette Jiles' "Enemy Women: A Novel of the Civil War"

sadiesadiesade: Easy to read

United States on Oct 09, 2023

Martha C. P: The writing style of the author was difficult for me to get through. I left it at the hotel we stayed at in Irelands “library” Don’t have much hope for the other title I also purchased by this author

United States on Sep 27, 2023

Thomas A. Donahue: The war came down hard on wives and sweethearts of men who joined the Confederate cause in the struggle from 1861 to '65. These women were effectively used as stand-ins for their men, and as an object of retribution for the cause their husbands espoused. It is the first novel I read by the Texas author Plaulette Jiles. I have now read, I believe, all but one of her writings. She has an excellent capacity to relate circumstances and define characters with few words well chosen. Certainly anyone with an interest in Civil War era history should buy and enjoy this novel.

United States on Sep 22, 2023

Rodney D.: Another great book by an author who has become one of my personal favorites. One of my daughter's is a teacher who plans to use Ms. Giles "News of the World" in her high school lit class this coming school year. That's high praise, indeed.
Rod

United States on Aug 13, 2023

thegreenhillsofafrica: Adair survives the American Civil War in the Ozarks and this story is about how she survives it. Jiles is poetry in motion with her prose. Which doesn’t mean she can’t describe warfare or suffering or wounds or death. Just that she can carry you along through everything and bring you out more and not less on the other side and wishing there were just one more chapter to read.

Canada on May 29, 2023

Amazon Customer: I'm a Brit with an interest in the American Civil War, which led me to the Tom Hanks Movie. This is my second book by this writer, I enjoyed both the film and the book of The News of the World, so had to read her some more. This is so well laid out, it's easy reading, a believable storyline about a nasty war that she has worked up into a very credible novel with many twists and turns.
Up to now my reading of this war had been the sterile histories, heavy of facts and low on the awfulness of it all, the numbers lost meaning etc. This takes you to a different place in that war.
A great story, superbly told.

United Kingdom on Oct 12, 2022

M D Tuch: This is my second endeavor by Paulette Jiles, the first being the very good ‘News of the World’. ‘Enemy Women’ was her first novel and as almost everyone knows, her books intentionally lack quotations and sometimes punctuation and sentence structure. Although much easier to tolerate, her last book still retains these faults in spite of numerous reader complaints about them. That tells me that Jiles is going to continue along this path. Too bad.
Adair Colley is an interesting character, and I could get behind her determination to survive in a world gone crazy. A world where civilians are alternately mistreated (up to and including killed) by Union troops, then the CSA troops. Major William Neumann is also a survivor, but because of a different drive. Both of these protagonists see past the rough exterior of their worlds. For Adair, it is her resourcefulness to make use of odd things that come her way as she journeys toward home. Luck is stumbling across folks that are a help to her. Stumbling across her lost horse, Whiskey. Stumbling across Greasy John, and obtaining the planned path dangerous Union Militia territory. Some may think these coincidences are too convenient....

United States on Jan 29, 2022

Michael W.: Der Roman spielt in den Südstaaten während des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs. Frauen verlieren ihre Männer und oft genug auch ihr Heim. Grotesk werden sie pauschal verdächtigt, sie könnten den Feind durch Unterstützung und Spionage unterstützen: „Enemy Women“. Manche werden denunziert und verhaftet, viele sind obdachlos. Flüchtlingsströme entstehen. Parallelen zur Gegenwart werden deutlich, ohne dass man mit der Nase draufgestoßen wird. Neben der weiblichen Hauptperson tauchen immer wieder andere Frauengestalten auf, deren Schicksale und was der Krieg aus ihnen gemacht hat (im Guten wie im Schlechten) schlaglichtartig beschrieben werden. Keine Romanze! Der Stil der Autorin ist kraftvoll und berührend. Zugleich ist alles sehr gut recherchiert. Sogar ein Quellenverzeichnis ist vorhanden. Den einzelnen Kapiteln sind Zitate aus Quellen vorangestellt, die ein wenig wie ein griechischer Chor wirken.
Habe dies und andere Bücher von Paulette Jiles im englischen Original gelesen. Verstehe gar nicht, warum man noch keine deutschen Übersetzungen findet, anscheinend noch nicht mal von „News of the World“, kürzlich ja mit Tom Hanks verfilmt. Paulette Jiles: unbedingte...

Germany on Jun 11, 2021

brenpal: If you have read "The Last Runaway" by Tracey Chevalier, then, like me, you might be interested to also read "Enemy Women" to find out more background to personal struggles during some hard times in American history.

United Kingdom on Jul 14, 2013

Ralph Blumenau: The novel is set during the last year of the American Civil War. There are enough cruel incidents depicted in the novel; but to emphasize its more general nature, each chapter begins with a contemporary extract depicting the ruthlessness of that war.

The prose is magnificent: muscular, vivid, poetic, very American. Idiosyncratically, there are no quotation marks around dialogue, which is irritating at first; but one soon gets used to it.

Union troops - both regular army and a lawless and brutal militia - are more or less in control of Missouri, though resisted by Confederate guerillas. The central figure of the book is Adair Colley, aged eighteen when the militia took away her father, a local judge, as a suspect, stole their horses and plundered and wrecked her house. Adair and her two younger sisters set out on a 120 mile walk to the local Union headquarters to find out where their father had been taken. When they got there, Adair was arrested, accused of giving information to Confederates, and sent to a grim women's prison in St. Louis. Major William Neumann, who interrogates her, says she can be free if she writes an account naming the people to whom she is said...

United Kingdom on Jul 04, 2011