Very specific recommendations

[Recycledblonde]

My adult daughter is doing a book exchange and has been paired with a woman in Germany who has sent a specific description of a type of book she would like. They have become friends online so this isn't as cheeky as it sounds and she doesn't expect all the criteria to be met in one book necessarily. The book will be written in the English language preferably by a British author.

The description is: books in a military setting focusing on soldiers, set after WWII not Russians or Americans, no overglorification of war, romance not being the main plot. She's okay with crime, classics, urban/low fantasy and read and enjoyed D.H. Lawrence, Orson Wells, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy. She doesn't own anything by Agatha Christie but likes that style.

My DD has asked my advice and my mind has gone blank so I thought I would ask the hive mind of MN readers for advice.

Can anyone help?

The Virgin Soldiers by Leslie Thomas

What about Regeneration by Pat Barker? Although I can't remember how much romance is in the novel, I remember it being very good.

These don't quite meet the brief but along those lines I will recommend:

• The Siege and The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (set amongst medical persecution in Leningrad)

• Sarah Waters has three post war books (not military) capturing changing society in post-war England

• Patricia Wentworth 's Miss Silver series - predates Miss Marple. Elderly female detective during and after WWII.

The Regeneration trilogy is excellent (but WWI not WWII).

Non fiction but "Harry's Last Stand" by Harry Leslie Smith

I was going to say Atonement but it is a romance. It's an amazing novel but quite a challenging read.

how about Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab? It doesn't glorify war (although it's pretty frank about the realities of why men join the SAS), and I found it absolutely fascinating.

Post WW2 military is a difficult ask, mostly because it’s the last big conflict so obviously draws a lot of the fiction, and non-fiction you’re more likely to get post WW2 conflicts explored. Hmm, tricky.

Yes, and then there are obviously loads of spin-off fiction series by McNab, Chris Ryan etc. But don’t fit the ‘No over-glorification of war’ thing!

There’s a really interesting fairly recent non-fiction book on a woman’s time on the SAS camp in support services which might make a good companion piece book to McNab? Geezers:On Camp with the SAS

Thank you everyone, I knew I could rely on MN!

I don't think she minds some romance but doesn't want a purely sweet and sickly romance.
They're in their 30s and avid readers so difficult reads aren't a problem.

Any of these any good?
www.lovereading.co.uk/blog/7-modern-military-thrillers-featuring-characters-with-former-military-or-intelligence-skills-8656

Along the lines of Atonement, Kate Atkinson’s Transcription is great but more espionage during WW2 than a military setting per se.

The Sabre Squadron by Simon Raven. It’s set during a huge NATO military exercise in the 60. Very funny.

Still Life? Maybe not military enough but a beautiful read

@Recycledblonde If she could get hold of a secondhand copy of Betty Miller's On the Side of the Angels, that might be a possible (plenty of secondhand copies kicking around)? There’s a bit of what you might call romance in it, but it’s definitely not primarily a love story. I really enjoyed it - here’s my review from the 50 Books thread earlier this year:

Betty Miller was the mother of doctor, satirist and polymath Jonathan Miller, but also a very fine novelist. This Virago reprint is, I think, one of only two of her books currently available. Set in, and written during, WW2, it zooms in on the small Gloucestershire village of Linfield, where young mother Honor Carmichael and her husband Colin - a prissy small-town doctor now serving in the RAMC - are billeted.
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Colin is obsessed with his CO, the tedious and capricious Col. Mayne, while Honor is drippily in thrall to her husband. Her sister Claudia, a much sparkier personality, observes all this but is nevertheless drawn in to the life of the base and finds herself fascinated by the tall, dark Captain Herriot, a glamorous visiting Commando. To complicate matters, Claudia is engaged to Andrew, an embittered local solicitor discharged from the army on health grounds.
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Miller's writing is pin-sharp and her descriptions are fabulously visual. She evokes the whole atmosphere of this small group of people struggling with complicated emotions as though she was putting them under a microscope and showing every tiny detail - her daughter explains in the foreword that a lot of the setting was based on Miller’s own experiences when her husband, a doctor, was called up to the RAMC . Really marvellous writing. Very sadly, she developed Alzheimer’s and died at only 55.

Sorry, some weird formatting there, not sure what happened!

Harry's Game by Gerald Seymour.

Hunt for Red October?

A lot of the more modern stuff is the invincible hero going against an entire army of terrorists and being home in time for tea and lashings of ginger beer. (Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series or the Matthew Reilly "Scarecrow" books).

Fatherland by Robert Harris, it doesn't focus on the military, though they are involved. Set in the 1950s, there are occasional hints of romance, but few and far between, they don't get in the way of the plot.

Would John le Carre fit the bill? Obviously his most famous books are about the cold war but there are plenty that aren't about Russians or Americans. A Small Town in Germany is one of the best, also The Little Drummer Girl which is about the Israel/Palestine conflict.

(btw I thought Fatherland was awful and wouldn't recommend it myself)