When Will This War Be Over? “by Emma Simpson”

 

Sunday, May 29, 1864

There is talk of a terrific battle just east of here-- near Spotsylvania Courthouse. Terrible casualties are feared on both sides.

The full title of this volume is When Will This War be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864.

It is the war time experiences as recorded by a 14-year-old girl in the war-ravaged Confederate South.

Or is it?

After one has finished the volume, we are tripped to the fact that this is no diary at all, but the concoction of author Barry Denenberg who decided to compose this piece not as verisimilitude fiction but present it as fact and then make the “reveal” after one has plowed thru the pages.

I read many a first-hand account of Westerners, frontier folk, and memoirs of the Civil War. Sure, some of them are not up to literary snuff [some are] but even those that are not have a compelling drive to them by dint of being true. Life as lived by those in the midst.

I cut slack to spending time with a young girl attempting to grapple with her circumstances in her broken “young girl” prose as she is simply a human being recording her soul to the best of her ability.

But…to have made those emotional allowances and to discover that one has plowed thru sub-standard prose for “literary effect,” well, I feel deceived.

It is not the mere deception that leads to my distaste for this volume—it is that the deception did not allow me to pass judgment in an honest manner.

If I knew it were fiction going in, I might have stopped earlier and felt no need to comment.

I don’t finish many a volume as they are not to my taste but feel that it would be a disservice to “review” what I have not consumed in full.

There is always the possibility that the next page after my stopping point the work in question becomes startlingly brilliant and it is my lack of fortitude that means I miss out.

The present work—I read because I assumed it awas authentic. No hint at deception until the last page is turned.

My take on this is one of a “burned” reader. One going in with foreknowledge of the “trick” may enjoy more.

But…the false sentiment of a grown man aping a 14-year-old girl, still strikes me doubtful.