Tuesday 13 January 2015

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

After reading Shame and the Captives, which I loved so much, I pulled Daughters of Mars from my bookshelves.  This is an incredibly researched novel of the first world war about two sisters, Naomi and Sally.  Both are nurses in Australia and join the war effort in that capacity.  Told in the third person, the point of view shifts from sister to sister.  They start out together on a hospital ship, launched from Egypt and end together on the western front.  Never before have I read a novel that illustrates the absolute arbitrariness of who lives, who dies in the great and awful war machine. The novel is immense with plot without sacrificing character development.  Naomi is the elder and stronger sister, Sally is the more conflicted; they both harbour a secret and may have been complicit in their mother's death by administering an overdose of stolen morphine to hasten her death from painful and terminal cancer.   In one incredible chapter the hospital ship's red cross identification is painted over black to be used to transport more men and horses to the field.  The ship is torpedoed and sunk.  Naomi and Sally are part of a group on a life boat waiting for rescue, with soldiers hanging on to the sides of the boat, until the cold and fatigue cause some to just let go and drift off to drown.  My heart was in my throat reading this chapter.

Naomi and Sally are separated after rescue.   Naomi's strength and sense of justice cause her to rebel against a cruel hospital colonel and she is sent back to Australia.  She reapplies and is successful, eventually becoming a nurse at a privately funded hospital near the western front.  Sally also goes to the western front at a clearing station very close to the fighting.  Keneally is impeccable in his description of treatment of the injured and dying men.  How little one could do for these poor men in 1917.  Amputate.  Morphine.  And the quicker back to the fighting the better.  Shell shock and the irony of so called shirking.

To further illustrate the arbitrariness of who lives, who dies, both sisters contract the influenza that swept the world in 1918.  In a heart stopping final chapter to this woeful war two endings are given.  Do both sisters die?  Or does Naomi live and Sally die?  Does Sally live and Naomi die?   It might have been a literary gimmick, but I chose to see it as a beautiful and thoughtful way to illustrate how effectively and devastatingly any life changes when just one life is lost in war.