Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce

When A J Pearce found an old wartime women’s magazine complete with agony pages, she was impressed by the strength, resolution and sufferings of the women’s lives, and was inspired to write ‘Dear Mrs Bird’. The result is a sweet little story with a hard centre.
When Emmeline Lake answers an advertisement for a ‘Junior’ at Launceston Press she thinks she is on her way to being an intrepid Lady War Correspondent, but instead finds herself compiling readers’ letters for the alarming Mrs Bird, Editor of Woman’s Friend magazine and also its monstrously unsympathetic agony aunt. It is 1940 and London is in the grip of the blitz, and readers’ lives all over England have been turned inside out by the pressures of war, but Mrs Bird’s robust advice is to stiffen your spine and ‘crack on’. Ignoring the turmoil of her readers, the doughty Mrs Bird has a long list of subjects she simply won’t countenance in the pages of Woman’s Friend. Emmy has other ideas, and as we follow Emmy through her many mistakes and misapprehensions in her attempts to lend some assistance, we wince with concern along with her best friend Bunty. For the most part a light and funny read, but of course, this is wartime and there is heartache ahead too.

Having worked in women’s magazines, I was intrigued by this affectionate look at women’s wartime struggles, from rationing to unwanted pregnancy, confusions about sex and the terrible pain of loss. Women were needed, vital to the war effort and doing important work and the old morals were being overturned all over Blighty. Should ‘Anxious ‘ give herself to her secret soldier sweetheart even though he is Polish? Will ‘Desperate’ be able to hide the fact that she has had an extra-marital liason? These were the genuine turmoils of women of the day, and A J Pearce has mined authentic material to create the tensions of her novel.  But then again, the agonies of the human heart are timeless. A warm and moving read. Well, what are you waiting for? Crack on…

Revisited: The Dry by Jane Harper

The weather has been so scorching recently, I felt compelled to reread this. I’m not a huge reader of crime fiction, but I couldn’t resist The Dry. It had such a strong sense of place. You can just feel yourself in the middle of drought-hit Australia. Our flawed off-duty detective Aaron Falk is convincing as local anti-hero returned, wrestling with demons from his past, which are well hidden. Falk is asked by the father of his childhood friend Luke Hadler, to return to Kiewarra, after Luke has tragically killed himself, his wife and children. The father refuses to accept it. This journey back into small-town Australia is the last thing Falk wants, he has uncomfortable history there (which we are desperate to unravel) but it seems he owes Luke’s dad Gerry in some way that can’t be denied. Wonderfully evocative, and a refreshing change of location, Jane Harper manages to draw out the mystery with deftness. Excellent read.

The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

Minou is a young catholic woman in sixteenth century Carcassonne, France, the daughter of book seller Bernard Joubert. But her father has a secret he has never told and this leads Minou, her teenage brother Aimeric, and seven-year-old sister Alis gradually into terrible danger. It is the time of the religious trouble in France, hugenots against catholics, which lead to outbreaks of civil war. The burning chambers are the torture rooms of the French catholic Inquisition. Into this turmoil walks Piet, a young Hugenot who has stolen something of great value for the cause. The Turin Shroud. It is an engaging and entertaining historical novel, with friends and foes to add intrigue and danger to the fate of Minou, including the mysterious Lady of Puivert (who seems a bit like MiLady in the Three Musketeers). Kate Mosse does her research well, and it’s a time in French history that I don’t know much about, so that was refreshing. We find ourselves after some turns about at the battle of Toulouse. The confusion and vagaries of a sixteenth century city battle are well portrayed, and I did worry about our three youngsters, struggling to reconnect. But ultimately, I enjoyed this read more for the sense of place and history than anything extraordinary in the plot. There was an intriguing episode parked at the beginning of the book, in South Africa, which must relate to later events. I kept waiting, disappointingly for the story to somehow include this, perhaps in two time-frames or something, but no show. Since this is the first of a trilogy, I guess we will eventually circle back, but if you’re one of those people, like me, who browse the first few pages in a bookshop and think ‘aha, I like this,’ you might be irritated to find yourself in an entirely different country and century. Just saying…