Small Wars - by Sadie Jones (Paperback)

About the Book

"Sadie Jones has a long literary future ahead of her." --Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with the Pearl Earring

Fresh off her triumphantly assured debut novel The Outcast, award-winning author Sadie Jones has again delivered a quiet masterpiece in Small Wars. Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this "small war" on him, his wife Clara, and their family. Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones's gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

Book Synopsis

"What Small Wars shows us, and quite masterfully, is on how many fronts war takes its toll. Love, trust and intimacy in marriage become casualties. But so does war itself--our belief in it, that it's right and just and necessary; that it solves anything...Told with strikingly clear and muscular prose...Jones's narration is powerfully restrained, with a great deal of subterranean tension." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Sadie Jones tells the story of a young solider, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this "small war" on him, his wife Clara, and their family. Hal is a dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. He is eager to lead his men into combat. Clara, however, is relieved when they are posted instead to seemingly peaceful sun-kissed Cyprus. But war erupts over unification with Greece, the island is consumed by violence--and Hal discovers that his military training cannot help him navigate the minefields of moral compromise that lie beneath every battle he fights. Clara grows fearful of her increasingly distant husband. When she needs him most, she finds the once-tender Hal a changed man--a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come.

Reminiscent of classic tales of love and war such as The English Patient and Atonement, Jones's gripping novel also calls to mind the master works of Virginia Woolf and their portrayal of the quiet desperation of a marriage in crisis. Small Wars is at once a deeply emotional, meticulously researched work of historical fiction and a profound meditation on war-time atrocities committed both on and off the battlefield.

From the Back Cover

Passionate and brilliantly rendered, Small Wars questions how honor can exist amid cruelty and asks what becomes of intimacy in the grinding gears of empire.

A major in the British Army, Hal Treherne is a dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. He is eager to lead his men into combat; his wife, Clara, however, is relieved when they are posted instead to seemingly peaceful sun-kissed Cyprus. But war erupts over unification with Greece, the island is consumed by violence--and Hal discovers that his military training cannot help him navigate the minefields of moral compromise that lie beneath every battle he fights. Clara grows fearful of her increasingly distant husband. When she needs him most, she finds the once-tender Hal a changed man--a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come.

Review Quotes

"In lean, penetrating prose...Jones serves her themes most potently with an unflinching tumble of violent encounters that effectively transform Hal's liberation...into a haunting act of transcendence." -- New York Times Book Review

"A taut and transfixing novel... [Jones is] a gifted young author." -- Boston Globe

"Manages to be both rich and sparse...with just enough carefully selected detail to breathe vividness into the novel...In what reads as a quiet, calm work, Jones captures the essence of dehumanized warfare and renders inescapable parallels in a more modern world." -- Denver Post

"What SMALL WARS shows us, and quite masterfully, is on how many fronts war takes its toll. Love, trust and intimacy in marriage become casualties. But so does war itself--our belief in it, that it's right and just and necessary; that it solves anything...Told with strikingly clear and muscular prose...Jones's narration is powerfully restrained, with a great deal of subterranean tension." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A darkly compelling account of honor and disillusionment with contemporary resonance...a confirmation of [Jones's] considerable talent." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Ambitious and thematically charged...A timely novel, as well as a harrowing one" -- Christian Science Monitor

"To this grave account of degradation--from great wars to small, from certainty to doubt, from romance to resignation--Jones brings surprising reserves of energy and finesse." -- Donna Rifkind, Washington Post