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Title: GI Brides
Subtitle: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
Author: Duncan Barrett, Nuala Calvi
Narrator: Tania Rodrigues
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
Language: English
Release date: 09-02-14
Publisher: HarperAudio
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 63 votes
Genres: History, 20th Century
Publisher's Summary:
For listeners enchanted by the best sellers The Astronaut Wives Club, The Girls of Atomic City, and Summer at Tiffany's, an absorbing tale of romance and resilience - the true story of four British women who crossed the Atlantic for love, coming to America at the end of World War II to make a new life with the American servicemen they married.
The "friendly invasion" of Britain by over a million American G.I.s bewitched a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms, and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s easily conquered their hearts, leaving British boys fighting abroad green with envy. But for girls like Sylvia, Margaret, Gwendolyn, and even the skeptical Rae, American soldiers offered something even more tantalizing than chocolate, chewing gum, and nylon stockings: An escape route from Blitz-ravaged Britain, an opportunity for a new life in affluent, modern America.
Through the stories of these four women, G.I. Brides illuminates the experiences of war brides who found themselves in a foreign culture thousands of miles away from family and friends, with men they hardly knew. Some struggled with the isolation of life in rural America, or found their soldier less than heroic in civilian life. But most persevered, determined to turn their wartime romance into a lifelong love affair, and prove to those back home that a Hollywood ending of their own was possible.
Members Reviews:
A terrific case study
I loved this book, it provided an interesting look at the lives and loves, the joys and sorrows of war brides just after WWII.
It is not a happy book in many ways, but the culture differences from England to the US, strained, broken, and repaired relationships with husbands and in-laws... I read this book months ago, and it still haunts me. I'll read it again and recommend it to anyone I know who enjoys such things.
Wonderful true stories of very brave women
Fascinating true stories of young war brides, especially for anyone interested in the WWII era. The narrator has a lovely British accent that is pleasant to listen to EXCEPT when she is trying to disguise it as American or Italian. She constantly gets it wrong, and it is somewhat distracting. She sounds a bit like a woman from Brooklyn when she is reading the part of a woman from California, and completely muddles the accent of an Italian-immigrant-mother-in-law.  When she is speaking for American male soldiers, she sounds flat, crass and as though she is stereotypically "mocking Americans." She is borderline offensive in that she did not research it further, or at the very least work with a dialect coach. If you can't or won't get it right, then please just read the script with your own tongue.
GI Brides
I just love WWII history! There is such an amalgamation of beauty and romance, horror and desolation that I seem to be transfixed with these stories no matter what angle they take. In GI Brides we get another interesting angle (and one I haven't read yet): that of the English women who fell in love with the American men that flooded their shores and that left behind everything to follow these men to a country they knew so little about.