The Lives of Stella Bain by Anita Shreve - #TuesdayTeaser

Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at a book that has caught my eye.

This week we are looking at The Lives of Stella Bain by Anita Shreve.

It has been quite some time since I read a book by Anita. In fact, I do not think I have read one since I began this blog in 2013. So, it is high time that I rectified that, and this book may be just the impetus I need.

Of course, Anita is a well regarded author and she needs very little by way of introduction. Her novels have sold millions of copies worldwide. The Pilot's Wife, The Weight of Water and Resistance have been turned into films.

Sadly, Anita passed away in 2018 and is a significant loss to the world of literature.

The Blurb

Hauled in a cart to a field hospital in northern France in March 1916, an American woman wakes from unconsciousness to the smell of gas gangrene, the sounds of men in pain, and an almost complete loss of memory: she knows only that she can drive an ambulance, she can draw, and her name is Stella Bain.

A stateless woman in a lawless country, Stella embarks on a journey to reconstruct her life. Suffering an agonising and inexplicable array of symptoms, she finds her way to London. There, Dr August Bridge, a cranial surgeon turned psychologist, is drawn to tracking her amnesia to its source. What brutality was she fleeing when she left the tranquil seclusion of a New England college campus to serve on the Front; for what crime did she need to atone - and whom did she leave behind?

Vivid, intense and gripping, packed with secrets and revelations, The Lives of Stella Bain is at once a ravishing love story and an intense psychological mystery.

In the Beginning...

Sunrise glow through canvas panels. Foul smell of gas gangrene. Men moaning all around her. Pandemonium and chaos.

She floats inside a cloud. Cottony, a little dingy. Pinpricks of light summon her to wakefulness. She drifts, and then she sleeps.

Distinct sounds of metal on metal, used instruments tossed into a pan. She tries to remember why she lies on a cot, enclosed within panels of canvas, a place where men who die are prepared for burial away from the rest of the wounded, a task she has performed any number of times. She glances down and finds that she is wearing mauve men's pyjamas. Why do her feet hurt?

A small piece of cloth with a question mark on it is pinned to a uniform hanging from a hood. For several minutes, she studies the uniform before realizing that she does not know her own name. She receives this fact with growing anxiety.

The name Lis  floats lightly into her thoughts. But she does not think Lis is her name. Elizabeth...? No. Ella...? Ellen? Possibly, though there ought to be a sibilant. She ponders the empty space where a name should be.

The name Stella bubbles up into her consciousness. Can Stella be it? She examines the letters as they appear in her mind, and the more she studies them, the more certain she is that Stella is correct.

Again, she drifts into a half sleep. When she comes to, she cannot remember the name she has decided upon. She lets her mind empty, and gradually it returns.

Stella.

Such a small thing.

Such a big thing.

***

What a fabulous beginning. Is Stella really her name? And how has she ended up here? We need to read on to find out.