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.
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…
