Not So Quiet...

Inspired by perennial classic All Quiet on the Western Front, this is an unforgettable novel of war work, camaraderie and female friendship on the battlefields of WWI, and the brave and misled women on enemy lines . . .

‘What is to happen to women like me when this war ends … if it ever ends. I am twenty-one, yet I know nothing but death, fear, blood and sentimentality that glorifies in the name of patriotism.’

Nell Smith is one of England’s ‘Splendid Daughters’, middle-class women abroad doing their bit for King and Country in World War One. At just 21, she pays for the privilege of driving an ambulance to ferry the dying and wounded between the front line and hospital.

Facing constant shellfire, half frozen, fed on inedible slop, with no sleep and enduring the lashing tongue of commandant ‘Mrs Bitch’, Nell and her sister drivers entertain no illusions about the war – unlike friends and family back home. Only their comradeship and letters from distant lovers sustains them.

As the war grinds on, the lottery of who lives and who dies creeps closer to Nell herself. A naïve girl volunteered for this. But who is this broken woman nightly driving blind through hell itself?

Praise for Helen Zenna Smith:

‘This intriguing book . . . vividly and impressionistically tells of the author's tour of duty in France. One welcomes its return to print’ New York Times Book Review

‘A bittersweet feminist anti-war novel. Brilliantly written, and cleverly mixing humour with bitterness’ Library Journal