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Not So Quiet . . .

Helen Zenna Smith
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Product details

  • ISBN 9781405997065
  • Weight: 229g
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 22 Oct 2026
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

Rediscover the brilliance of Not So Quiet . . . in the Mermaid Collection - classic books by popular pioneering female authors republished to delight new generations of readers. Pre-order this gorgeous new edition now.

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 . . .

With a foreword by Alice Winn

‘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
About Helen Zenna Smith
Helen Zenna Smith was the pseudonym of Evadne Price, born in Australia (at sea, according to Price) as Eva Grace Price in 1888. In her early twenties, she moved to London and New York, looking for work. Soon returning to England – without her husband – she embarked on a stage career, married again, and turned to journalism. She began writing short pieces of comic fiction, including the popular Jane Turpin (a female Just William) stories. Not So Quiet . . . was originally commissioned as a satire of All Quiet on the Western Front, but Price thought that distasteful and turned to the diaries of a friend for inspiration in her tale of a female ambulance driver. It was an immediate sensation. Price also wrote over a hundred thrillers and romances under her own name, and appeared as an astrologer on TV. She died in Sydney in 1985.

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