On this wet, slushy, rainy, cold Sunday morning, I am
enjoying a cup of Winter’s Blend tea that a friend recommended to me, and it is
delicious! This will be a short post - I wrote a full post on Thursday, New Year’s Day, and hadn’t intended to
write today at all, but somehow a Sunday morning, as I settle in with my tea,
just isn’t the same without a little bit of blogging.
I have been reading The Postmistress by Sarah Blake these past few days, and am getting further along with it than I had expected,
so if the rain keeps me inside, I may even finish it before the end of
the day. This is the book we will be discussing at the book club meeting on Saturday, but I wanted to write a short plot summary
today so I could devote next week’s post to the discussion highlights. This popular book club choice tells the story
of three American women during the early days of WWII: Frances “Frankie” Bard is a journalist and
reporter, that “radio gal” that Americans listen to for updates on the war in
Britain, specifically the Blitz in London; Iris James
is the postmistress in Franklin, Massachusetts, a forty-ish single woman who
holds a high-ranking government job that, according to some townspeople, should
have gone to one of the many men who are out of work; and Emma Fitch, the youthful
new doctor’s wife, who must make a go of
it in her new town, which is her husband’s hometown. These three women must learn to cope with the
ever-changing atmosphere that surrounds them during wartime, before America
officially joined the war, and it is a novel about waiting, about love and
loss, and about what it means to be a hero in a world where communication is
slow and traditional roles are changing.
I don’t generally enjoy reading what I call “women’s books”, the type of
books that focus on the struggles of women against obstacles, personal or
man-made, but struggles that are specifically related to women. They also include details about women’s lives
(for example, in this book, childbirth and menstruation are detailed – things I
don’t really need to read about). I
chose this book for our book club because it is a popular book club selection
and many of my members enjoy reading historical fiction. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but despite my
misgivings, I have been looking forward to finding opportunities to read this
book over the last few days. I think it
is the tension the author has created, the uncertainty that I as a reader feel
about the situations in the novel and their outcomes, that perhaps resembles,
in some small way, the uncertainty that those during the war felt when they
didn’t know what was going on in Europe and didn’t know if those who had gone
over were ever coming back. Although I
don’t love her writing style, and would not actively seek out another book by
this author, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself so interested in this novel. I think my ladies will enjoy it, too – I’ll
let you know after our discussion next week.
OK, that’s all I have for today. Happy First Sunday in 2015!
Bye for now...
Julie
No comments:
Post a Comment