Anita Shreve's Stella Bain is another war story, but this one is entirely different in tone, setting and scope, though equally enjoyable in different ways. This is a story that hearkens back to battlefields, but WWI is almost more of a backdrop to the action. Shreve takes as her subject something I've not yet encountered in my "war" reading--shell shock, though not as experienced by a soldier rather by a battlefield nurse. This is a story that is quite unexpected in many ways. The story neatly unfolds, almost like a mystery being unraveled with surprises along the way. It's a story about memory and identity, about love and deception and about discovering what's most important in life.
Just who is Stella Bain? When she wakes up wounded in an army hospital, she's wearing a British nursing uniform but her accent is American. She doesn't know who she is, what happened to put her there, or anything about her past. No one seems to know anything about her. She doesn't even know if her name really is Stella Bain, but there is something familiar about it, so she takes on this unknown identity until she can piece together her life.
Until some semblance of a memory comes back to her she attends to sick and wounded soldiers and when it is discovered she can drive she puts her skills to use driving an ambulance. Although her memory remains closed she has an overwhelming sense that something awful happened in her past, that perhaps she did something awful and unforgivable that sent her off to volunteer for a war her own country has yet to even be a part of. But all these feelings remain on the fringe of her memory. She can't quite dredge up actual memories that she is certain of.
She has an overwhelming feeling that London holds answers for her, and particularly the Admiralty. When she is offered leave, she sets of with only a vague idea of what she needs to do. Her hope is that she will see someone who will spark her memory or that someone will see her and recognize her. It's a huge leap of faith, but she takes it and is rewarded by making the acquaintance of a surgeon and his wife. Dr. Bridge is a student of the new science of the study of the mind. With so many walking wounded, and not just physically wounded but mentally as well, it's knowledge that he puts to good use. For Dr. Bridge Stella is a most interesting case and together they attempt to draw her memories out, whatever the outcome.
From this point on the story changes tack fairy significantly. The less revealed now by me the better the story for the reader later. It's here that the story really builds up steam as Stella learns who she is and how she came to be in France. There is lots of cause and effect both in what prompted her to leave and how she tries and settle back into her former life. Actually there is no going back only learning to live in a different way, taking responsibility for choices made previously and attempting to sort out the wrongs done before.
I've only read a smattering of Anita Shreve's work, but what I've read I have enjoyed. I wonder if some readers might find this story, despite the issues Shreve manages to deal with, a little too pat. It was a satisfying story with a good ending, yet strangely I sometimes think that somehow sets books like this apart from slightly more highbrow literature. Do 'happy'/satisfying endings somehow relegate certain stories to a less serious level? I plan on reading more of Anita Shreve's work. She's been a dependably good storyteller, her stories not too slight nor too heavy. And I suspect this is just the first in what is going to be a long year of WWI reading.