This is rough read and that isn't helped by the book being longer than it probably should be. I get the capital "I" importance of this book but it feels like the author really wanted to pile absolutely everything onto her main character and it leads to what could and should be a relatable story of struggle into an exercise in melodrama. I blame a lot of that on Frankie's various love affairs, which rocket back and forth from tragic to tawdry. For a book title The Women, and attempting to highlight those that served in Vietnam but whose service was often overlooked and forgotten, I just wish there was more focus on her time with her fellow women than on the men in her life. There are a few moments in the book where this is true, but it often feels very brief and superficial—like little positive speed bumps in her intensely depressing story.

I also question whether Frankie is the most ideal character for this story. As the daughter of a well-to-do family, her experience is so very different from a lot of people who go to war and struggle on the return. For all the hardships she goes through, she has an immense series of safety nets and support systems that she can fall back on (e.g., she's never at risk of ending up on the streets, like so many vets have). The purpose of this seems to be to emphasize how ostracized she is when she comes home to a community that doesn't even seem to know or care that there's a war on, but when you compare that to her fellow veteran Barb, a Black woman whose brother was killed protesting the war...it just seems like an odd choice for the voice of this story.