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Published Jan 2010
384 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Sadie Jones, the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of The Outcast, returns with an ambitious, richly imagined novel that confirms her place in the literary firmament.
A passionate and beautifully written tale of personal loss in the midst of war in late 1950s Cyprus, Small Wars raises important questions that are just as relevant today.
What happens when everything a man believes in — the army, his country, his marriage — begins to crumble? Hal Treherne is a young British soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Transferred to Cyprus to defend the colony, Hal takes his wife, Clara, and their daughters with him. But Hal is pulled into atrocities that take him further from Clara, a betrayal that is only one part of a shocking personal crisis to come.
"Yet if the book falters in its more sweeping ambitions, it is uncannily good at the evocation of charged moments ... Jones casts new light on her examination of mid-century Englishness by transplanting it abroad, making us feel the full force of emotion concealed behind the euphemisms all her characters use; and lays out with great honesty and directness the quandaries of war, and war's effects, which remain as painfully pressing today." - The Guardian (UK)
"Jones tries her hand at gory battle scenes, but more compelling are the small inner conflicts of both soldiery and marriage. ... It's hard to imagine how a novel that deals so deftly with shame, duty and discipline could be set in contemporary England. One wonders where Sadie Jones will go from here." - The Telegraph (UK)
"As with The Outcast this is, at heart, a moving love story. Jones explores how love may be warped and threatened by politics or polite society but will ultimately endure. She may not have strayed too far from her debut but this follow-up shows that she is no one-hit wonder." - The Times (UK)
"In this exciting novel that resonates with contemporary parallels, Jones is unusual among women writers in focusing as much on the thrills and terrors of front-line action as its psychological fallout. If the events of Hal's homecoming are well-semaphored, the middle section gives this elegantly conceived work its fire. It's a movie waiting to happen." - The Independent (UK)
"[W]ith all the complex contours right there in front of you. You'd swear you can feel the heat and the danger radiating off them like an element on a stove...." - Globe & Mail (Canada)
"Starred Review. This richly imagined and warmly atmospheric story convincingly demonstrates that small wars, like all wars, are hell. This is historical fiction at its best. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. It's the perfect mix of poignant and harrowing. " - Publishers Weekly
"A thought-provoking meditation that powerfully evokes both the costs of waging war and the loving bonds of marriage." - Booklist
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in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo by Charles Hopkinson
Sadie Jones is the author of five novels, including The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in Great Britain and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the enchanting, hard-hitting novel set on the island of Cyprus during the British occupation, Small Wars; her most successful, bestselling novel The Uninvited Guests, beloved of Ann Patchett and Jackie Winspear, among others; the romantic novel set in London's glamorous theatre world, Fallout; and the highly acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Snakes. Sadie Jones lives in London.
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