The Soldier's Wife - review

In her latest novel, Joanna Trollope takes on the plight of the Army wife. When we meet Alexa Riley she is awaiting the return of her husband Dan from his latest tour in Afghanistan. Rather than waiting eagerly, she worries that their separation, marked by six months of fear and only weekly phone calls, will cause Dan to retreat into himself and avoid discussing anything that has happened at home in his absence.

Her companions include a cluster of close girlfriends in parallel situations, as well as two demanding three-year-old twins and a faithful black Labrador, Beetle. But despite these friendships, Alexa remembers leaving a good job to marry for love and now feels unfulfilled by the dreary routine of dog walking, cooking, worrying about her teenage daughter Isabel, who is desperately homesick at boarding school, and the constant feeling of having to fit in with the needs of the Army. "There's always an Army thing that has to come first," she remarks.

Back at home in Larkford Camp the now "visibly thin" Dan chooses to adjust to his old life not by being at home and catching up with his wife but by continuing to hold rank as an Army Major. "We have some domestic wrinkles that won't be ironed out until I've counted all my boys out with clean faces and dire warnings," he confides to his best friend Gus, yet he struggles to see how to smooth things over.

Unable to communicate her frustrations to her husband, Alexa seeks the advice of her parents and best friend, the "cheerful, dependable affectionate human handrail" Jack Dearlove, much to Dan's annoyance.

Trollope has some cheery if clichéd observations about family life but somehow fails to make the characters believable enough for us to want to help them - "Just talk!" you want to shout - and for the most part it is wearing just watching as the couple's behaviour puts strains on everyone around them.

Furthermore, while she respects those who fight for their country, Trollope is clearly aware of the problems being in an Army family can create, from a now quiet Dan returning with "ears still ringing" to Alexa constantly thinking she might have sold out. "Did it mean controlling yourself, subduing yourself, repressing yourself, until you felt yourself to be not only at breaking point but a mere distorted shadow of the woman he'd married?" she wonders.

Trollope asks questions but fails to find answers. For example, it seems too easy for the Brigadier's wife Claire to explain that there are - shock horror! - "these wives who want careers, too, not just part-time jobs". Yet there is barely a suggestion of what these women could do next.