I feel the author missed his chance to explore the subject of incest from the child's perspective.While casting most of the blame on the child; it never explains the WHY. I feel the novel was exploitive and needn't have been; since the subject itself always is. There was a lack of clarity in regard to the child's motivation in manipulating the people closest to her in such a perverse way. The book left alot of unanswered questions and I had an overall feeling of sadness after reading it. The child was again victimized; only this time by the author.

This is an incredibly upsetting book. The author's writing skill notwithstanding, I doubt I could recommend this novel to anyone I know.
The War Zone is told by protagonist Tom in present tense. He is the pre-teenaged younger brother of Jessica, a teenager "of loose virtue" whose conquests include the seduction of their father. This is the story of Tom's discovery of the incestuous relationship after the birth of their younger brother, and how it wreaks havoc on his prepubescent mind.
As I said, this book is well-written. Nonetheless, I found it horribly disturbing. I might consider recommending it to an adult, but by no means would I give it to an adolescent, no matter how mature he or she might be. This does not portray an ordinary family, no matter how loosely one defines "ordinary." Better written than VC Andrews's Dollanganger series, the plot constantly challenges incest and why Tom thinks it's wrong despite his sister's arguments. The War Zone does not commend these actions, but breaks the reader's heart when reading from the point of view of poor Tom. The very typing of this review disturbed me.

Where in the world do I start? I had never heard of the War Zone until I began to read about Tim Roth's proposed film. I admire Roth's acting and have been a fan of Ray Winstone (he gets the 'nice guy' role of Dad) since his debut in 'Scum'. Being a pedantic sort of person I felt bound to read the novel before I saw the film and got left with too concrete an impression of how the characters look. I've always been a fast reader but I devoured this book in a little over a day. Stuart's story is utterly compelling, I couldn't understand Jessie's motivation at all. It obsessed me, was this girl sociopathic in her total indifference to the people she hurts? Or is she so damaged by what has happened to her that life means nothing more than a search for the ultimate taboo to break? Lesbian exhibitionism, beach sex with Nick, sex with both dad and brother, what's next for Jessica? Beautiful, intelligent, deadly - it is all too easy to dismiss Jessie as the instigator of the relationship, to dismiss her as a spoiled Lolita wreaking havoc for the ultimate thrill. Ultimately though, Jess is a victim and dad can't escape the fact that he is an abuser who destroys his entire family. Tom is a superb character; a turbulent mix of humour, anger and frustration. I thought the novel was fantastic, particularly in it's climactic scene and the close collaboration of author Stuart and director Roth (Stuart wrote the screenplay and was closely involved with the casting of the family) leads me to expect great things of the film. Get watching and reading folks, the subject matter is horrific and it is graphic but it is something we all need to face. For all it's horror, this novel exerts a grim fascination.

Probably the worst historical novel I have ever read. One half of the book consists of a syrupy faux-Victorian love story between cardboard characters, the other sounds as if it was lifted verbatim from one of the duller pre-World War I military textbooks. It would seem hard to make the Charge of the Light Brigade sound as exciting as the daily Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but that is exactly what Ms. Stuart's does. Obviously the publisher is trying to cash in on the current vogue in 18th and 19th century soldier and sailor yarns by republishing this dud, but you'd do better to save your money and re-read the Sharpe series instead.

This book has strong elements of a Victorian romance novel mixed with military elements. There is as much attention to the officer's women as to soldiers. The story takes place during the amateurish British campaign (after 40 years of peace) west around the Black Sea to the Crimea in support of the Ottoman Turks against the Russians. Alexander Sheridan is a disdained but competent English officer. It's hard to like him much, for he's a bit wooden. He's been a bit of a fool in love and gotten himself cashiered from the regular army and fled to India. He's in love with one or the other of the two beautiful Mowbray sisters who suddenly appear in his battle zone. The sentimentality and reticence seen in the relations between the genders may be true to the period (1854), and overlays a still hard world. The main thread is the forlorn lost love between Capt. Sheridan and Charlotte, rather than the fierce personal and battle emotions when he joins the Light Brigade (yes, THAT infamous brigade, so yu know what must happen...). Alex and the girls' eight years together in India are entirely skipped, so tight is the focus on the romantic triangle of the moment. Dialogue is restricted to proper Victorian discreetness. We are spared battlefield carnage, as military affairs are kept in the distance. The author, a WW II British lieutenant herself, foregrounded the suffering of women surrounded by men at war, trying to survive and nurse cholera victims in appalling filth and disorder, and striving to keep or get an officer husband while crazed with fear or jealousy.

The Crimean battles are mostly described in offialese from the generals' and units' perspectives, with no overview of the strategy. There's nothing of the personal fear and shock of raw troops, or the novelistic here. At least until the inadvertant Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade, when we get to see through Sheridan's eyes the confusion and horror of that affair, when "cannon volleyed and thundered...someone had blundered" (Tennyson). Amid the filth it lift's one's heart to see Emmy Mobray open the way for Florence Nighingale to begin the army nursing profession. The presentation is good and includes two vintage maps.

This book is far too contrived for its own good. In trying to make some sort of point about the individual capacity for violence and sex, Stuart creates a silly plot with some totally over the top characters. The plot circles around a London movie producer who is trying to make a masterpiece movie based on an ultraviolent play about warring soccer hooligan gangs. Along the way he falls in love with a crew member and hires a hooligan (presumably a skinhead of sorts) to be a driver. Much is made of how little difference there is between the upper class producer and the lower class thug. For some reason Stuart chose not to use real soccer teams in his narrative, which only further hinders the book. It really reads as if the author is basing a lot of his notions of what he has read and heard about, rather than seen. A novel which covers the theme of violence much better and realistically is John King's The Football Factory.