Why I Hate “The Women” #100DaysofSummer
An eye for an eye only
Leeds to more blindness
– Margaret Atwood
A few months ago I was promoting my The Nurses and Hypochondriacs Podcast and writing courses at a Nurse Practitioner conference in Denver, Colorado. As I was chatting with a fellow NP she asked “have you read The Women by Kristen Hanna?”
“No I haven’t. What did you like about it?” I responded.
“Oh, the women. The nurses. They were “invisible.” She answered as if she was placed under some kind of a spell.
I had never heard of the book “The Women.” Nor had I ever heard of Kristen Hanna the author. I immediately got a bad taste in my mouth when I found out that the book about nurses serving in the Vietnam war was written by a non nurse. Actually, Kristen Hanna is an attorney. The one thing I learned from my writing classes is that attorneys make fabulous writers and storytellers.
However, my mouth got even more sour when I found out “The Women” is a fictional story. It’s not even true. It’s just a made up story.
And sure it’s number one the NYT’s best sellers list for “fiction.” When you listen to “women” talk about “The Women “ on social media they sound like they’ve all been placed under some kind of sleeping beauty trance. They make Kristen Hanna’s story sound of “The Women” sound like it’s “true” when in reality it’s “fiction.”
Perhaps that’s just the writing prowess of an attorney turning a fictional character and story into a potential truth. I mean really, court cases are not about who’s right or wrong, it’s all about who can tell a good story.
Stephen King states “Books are portable magic.” And as you can see from the countless “women” reading “The Women” this seems to be true.
Curious, I tried to checkout “The Women” from the library in Rancho Mirage and of course it was on a huge waiting list. So, I spent the $25.00 and some change and bought it at Barnes and Noble.
“The Women” sat on my desk for a few days. I didn’t read it right away. I tried once but I was detoured or technically “locked out” by the first few sentences. I was further detoured from reading it because of the dedication to the “Heros of the Covid 19 pandemic, the nurses.” Right there. That’s where Hanna’s spell casting starts, with the words “Hero & Nurse.” And the notion that “the Covid 19 pandemic was a war.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Covid 19 was some type of biological warfare leashed onto the masses. In fact, at the end of 2019, right before Covid hit, I got an article published where my research found that a “bioterrorisitic type of attack was on the horizon.”
Getting Locked Out of the Party
I also got stuck on “mullioned windows,” and perhaps you can say I was subconsciously locked out of the McGrath house and the party so that I couldn’t enter to read the book. Of course, I was like “what the hell is a “mullioned” window?” It sounds like something Chat GPT made up. Some type of AI word guarding the fortress of entry into the rest of the story. S
So, I googled it:
As you can see, it kind of looks like a prison of sorts. And maybe that’s what the author was conveying that the protagonist a young 20 year old nurse was living in a prison.
The first few pages takes you past these mullioned windows and into the Mc Garth home where misogyny is king and the protagonists brother is being celebrated before he goes off to the Vietnam war. The protagonist “Frankie” a 20 year old nurse finds herself in her fathers “war room” full of war memorabilia and metals from male family members. A man walks in on Frankie staring at the “war wall,”
“Are you on the wall?” He asks.
“No. It’s a war wall. Only men are on it.” She says something like that.
“You can be on that wall too!” The man says.
Eye-roll, Are You Kidding Me?
I must confess. I only read 50 pages of “The Women.” I usually give a book a good 50 pages of my time to read it. And “The Women” didn’t suck me in.
I mean, Hanna lost me with the whole concept of Frankie enlisting to go to Vietnam just because she needed to prove to her father that she could make it on “the war wall.”
Frankie went to serve in a war in Vietnam all because of her EGO!
And of course Hanna uses the great concept of “the law of threes” to further hook you in with Frankie trying to enlist in the Navy, Marines and finally the Army who ends up accepting her.
My Theory On Why Women Love The Women
First of all, the title is a mind fuck. “The Women,” It’s branded for “women” to read. Second of all, the nursing brand has been taken advantage of since the turn of the century when trademark laws were enacted. Third of all, the author is writing a story for disempowered women. Women, who like the NP I mentioned earlier, may see themselves as invisible.
When you write a story, the reader automatically is seated in the protagonists seat and starts to see the world in their eyes. It’s kinda like donning on a pair of Virtual Reality goggles and entering into another world. But this is where things get tricky. This is where fictional stories turn into reality.
Spell casting through storytelling
Words cast spells. That’s probably why so many women love the women. Hanna and her editors have placed the readers in a trance like state and placed them in the “victim” seat. It’s exactly the same reason why so many women love “true crime” documentaries.
And like Stephen King says, books are indeed portable magic making something that’s untrue, true.
Hanna knows how to cast spells. She’s written tons of books that are NYT bestsellers that have been optioned for movies. That keeps her in business. Good for her.
But here’s where the problem is with books like this, it’s fake, it’s fiction, it’s not true. It’s just a story.
Hanna has created an egregoire, a non physical entity or thought form that arises from the collective thoughts and thought forms of a collective group that will bring the story and or thought form into existence giving it a life.
Yup. Hanna was using feminism and also a level of disempowerment to hook a certain audience of “women.” It’s kinda like why certain women love true crime shows, they like to be in the victims place. A place of disempowerment.
notoriouslysinglegirl 
One Response to “Why I Hate “The Women” #100DaysofSummer”
I’m surprised by how much I disliked this book as 1) I’m a nurse and 2) so many people loved the book. I agree with every point you made about the book…except for your assuredly confident belief that COVID was an act of bioterrorism, but that’s besides the point of my leaving a comment here. I just wanted to echo your criticism about the book and thank you for posting it! We’re not the crazy ones. The book stinks!