Those Girls by Pamela Rushby

Title: Those Girls

Author: Pamela Rushby

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 3^rd April 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 336

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: New, from award-winning historical novelist, Pamela Rushby, exploring the roles, and struggles, of women in wartime

The poster had a picture of a tanned, healthy girl, wearing a regulation uniform hat and shorts that were, surely, anything but regulation.
When Hilly volunteers for the Women’s Land Army in 1942, she’s sixteen years old. She expects to be picking sun-kissed fruit and bottle-feeding fluffy white lambs, all while she’s wearing a flattering outfit.

Travelling to farms across Queensland, Hilly encounters backbreaking work, but also friendship and fellowship with other Land Army girls, Aileen and Glad, all seeking independence for their own reasons. War is a chance for a life away from family and familiarity, offering adventure and romance. But the poster didn’t mention crutching sheep or 4 am starts. Or the prejudice they would face, and that some men needed to be fought off, rather than fought for. In the midst of adversity, Hilly finds exactly what she is capable of … and it might be more than she ever thought possible. She is one of ‘those girls with grit’.

~*~

It’s World War Two-, and 16-year-old Hilly wants to do something to help, and get away from home, where she doesn’t feel like her parents appreciate her. It’s a chance to do something useful whilst her brother is away in Singapore. So, she signs up for the Women’s Land Army in Brisbane. When she does, she imagines picking fruit and feeding lambs – but it’s far from this, and along with her new friends, Aileen and Glad, who have joined up for their own reasons, but at the core, they all want independence and to contribute to the war effort in a different way.

Hilly and her new friends are faced with adversity, early starts, prejudice, and the need to defend themselves against unwanted advances. It is amidst this adversity and the presence of American soldiers that makes Hilly find out what she is capable of – she is after all, one of ‘those girls with grit’.

Pamela Rushby’s latest young adult book is another fantastic historical fiction about girls and women, and what their lives were like on the home front during the Second World War. They worked hard to provide for the country and troops during the war years, to keep the country running – all whilst facing discrimination, being taken advantage of, or looked down on because they weren’t seen as being important to the war effort. Through the stories of Hilly, Aileen, Glad and their friends, the Australian Women’s Land Army comes to life, and shines a light on the women who worked hard during the war in a different way, but whose stories are not as well known, and whose stories are being told widely now, as it is an area of history that I didn’t know much about, that I had really only heard mentioned briefly somewhere without much expansion.

Hilly, as the central character, drives much of the narrative, and when she meets American soldier, Gene, things start to get complicated. He has certain expectations – that she will his girl and only his girl, or that she will adjust her life and leave around him – that her needs or work is not as important. I got this feeling as they interacted more, and whilst he wasn’t a nasty character, I did feel a touch unsettled by him, as though he wanted something and didn’t want to take no for an answer – within the context of the 1940s and what he wanted from Hilly. The reactions of Hilly and her friends suited the time period, as it was understood that good girls like them would finish their time in the Land Army and go home, back to families and get ready for a married life – but those girls were the kind of girls who wanted something more. Like Hilly, who wrote stories about the Land Girls and built a career during her time. This move showed that there was much more to these girls than met the eye, and showed that they were in charge of their own fates.

Hilly and her friends are girls and women who don’t let society tell them what to do, and even if they do what society thinks is appropriate, they do it on their terms. They support each other and stick by each other, and refuse to let other people take advantage of them. They created a family for themselves when they didn’t have a lot of support from their families, and forged a future that saw them refusing to do what other people wanted them to do. Instead, they did what made them happy. I found that this was a key part of the novel, and showed that during the war years, women did a lot more than we may know or have thought. It is novels like this that can reveal something we may not have known about, teach us more about history and add stories to history in an accessible and engaging way. In highlighting the stories of the Land Girls and what they faced, Pamela has allowed readers a glimpse into what life as a Land Girl was like, and the contrasting attitudes of the American soldiers like Gene to attitudes of Hilly and her friends – the way they came across as more accepting and open-minded, more willing to give people a go, compared to stringent views and ideas that the men like Gene had. This contrast I felt was effective – to show that Hilly needed to find her own way. I loved that Hilly grew throughout the novel, and think it is a great read, and would also complement studying World War II nicely.

Looking forward to the next Pamela Rushby book.