Author: Victoria Purman
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Year of Release 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction, Wartime, Australia, WW2
Relese Date: 2nd September 2020
Rating 
Synopsis
Sydney 1945 The war is over, the fight begins.
The war is over and so are the jobs (and freedoms) of tens of thousands of Australian women. The armaments factories are making washing machines instead of bullets and war correspondent Tilly Galloway has hung up her uniform and been forced to work on the women’s pages of her newspaper – the only job available to her – where she struggles to write advice on fashion and make-up.
As Sydney swells with returning servicemen and the city bustles back to post-war life, Tilly finds her world is anything but normal. As she desperately waits for word of her prisoner-of-war husband, she begins to research stories about the lives of the underpaid and overworked women who live in her own city. Those whose war service has been overlooked; the freedom and independence of their war lives lost to them.
Meanwhile Tilly’s waterside worker father is on strike, and her best friend Mary is struggling to cope with the stranger her own husband has become since being liberated from Changi a broken man. As strikes rip the country apart and the news from abroad causes despair, matters build to a heart-rending crescendo. Tilly realises that for her the war may have ended, but the fight is just beginning…
Review
1945, Sydney Australia.
The war is over at long last our boys can return home to their wives, children, mothers and the jobs they left behind to serve King and country all those years before. Their return is highly anticipated and longed for by their families and the women they left behind, it means that whilst the physical war might be over for our hero’s the fight is just beginning for woman everywhere.
World War 2 has at last finally come to an end, Australia’s first female War correspondent for the Daily Herald newspaper Tilly Galloway sit at her desk and cries tears of joy, the street down below erupts with celebration. This important event in history told through the perspectives of woman, how can you not get swept in the fight for change given the world’s current situation?
Thanks to author Victoria Purman’s writing The Woman’s Pages was able to highlight the strength, determination and patience woman had to possess during the wartime years. Also not forgetting the times of utter loneliness and complete despair at not knowing when or even if their son’s, brother’s and husbands would be returned home safe.
Tilly Galloway makes for the perfect heroin within these pages, she’s educated, kind and willing to report the truth even when being demoted downstairs to work in ‘the woman’s pages’ to write articles on domestic duties and the latest fashions is her only option. When all she wants to do is reunite with her husband and carry out the life they had planned.
I must admit there were times throughout this story I the reader wondered if the story would offer up any happiness for Tilly and Mary? It was quite easy to feel a continued loss throughout, but I understand during the wartimes years everything was so uncertain, it would have been so hard to find even a glimmer of hope, especially when both Tilly and Mary learn that their husbands have been taken POW’s (Prisoners of War) by the Japanese.
Covered with respect and kindness was the demons war left behind; upon it’s departure with many experiencing trauma, abuse, physical and emotional pain as well as grief and loss of fellow soldiers and their former selves in order to protect King and country.
Those of us lucky enough not to have witnessed such horrors know of these conditions and treatments, but back in the 1940’s such was not discussed nor known about to the extent we do today. Rather kept behind closed doors with no end in sight. I applaud Purman for shining a light on this as I believe even though we have come forwards in leaps and bounds in present day, I think there is always more to be done and making others aware is always a good place to start.
I particularly enjoyed reading of the new skills these woman now had to learn in order to survive, as a woman I cheer when I hear other woman making their own way achieving, thus leading to their own well deserved paycheck. Woman supporting woman shines bright within these pages and it’s becoming something I love to see happening and find myself looking for more and more in the books I read nowadays.
Having finished this book I believe my earlier concerns of whether or not there would be any happiness was because I found that I genuinely cared for Tilly and her inner circle of friends and family. I couldn’t bear the thought of her losing even more. The closing of this story has me wondering what does Tilly hope to gain from travelling to Japan? Only to realise she must pull back the curtain on stories most people rather stay hidden, which I personally believe we must always strive to do as a society now and in the future.
If you like me enjoyed this story I highly recommend other titles by Victoria Purman The Nurse’s War and A Woman’s Work to fans of Historical Fiction, in particular readers with an interest in the wartime period, readers who enjoy a character based read should also add this to their reading lists.
My continued thanks to Harper Collins Publishers, HQ Fiction for sending a copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.