Yours Cheerfully

Title:  Yours Cheerfully

Author:  AJ Pearce

Publication Information:  Scribner. 2021. 304 pages.

ISBN:  1501170090 / 978-1501170096

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "May I congratulate all married women who are at present doing war work as well as running their own  homes?"

Favorite Quote:  "Find out what you're good at and then get better at it ... if you're really, really lucky, you get to find out what you love to do. And then you should cherish every moment you get to do it."

Dear Mrs. Bird introduces readers to Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty during World War II and the blitz on London. This book continues that story towards a different part of the war and a different role for women. 

In Dear Mrs. Bird Emmeline is young and at times innocent and naive. At the same time, her heart is in the right place, and she genuinely cares and tries to help. In this book, Emmeline is little older and perhaps  a little wiser. Her caring and integrity remains the same. "Caring about getting things right is worth its weight in gold."

Dear Mrs. Bird is utlimately a story of friendship and the ability of a true friendship to survive whatever life throws at it. This book is a story of the strength of women particularly when they stand together and raise each other up. "In my view ... there are women who stick up for each other, and women who don't. You're either one or the other. It's as simple as that."

Emmeline is still a journalist and still writing an advice column. In this book, her task expands to write articles to urge women to the war effort. So many of the men are on the front lines, and women are needed to fill in the roles in factories and offices and other arenas where the need has not existed before.

The goal is to write uplifting, motivating missives that encourage more women to get involved. In doing the research, however, Emmeline finds a different reality. Women are encouraged to work. However, work conditions are not such that allow the balance of that work with commitments women still have to the their homes, their children, and their families.

It is the factory owners that have invited Emmeline in. However, the question arises. Does Emmeline write the positive pieces as directed or does she work with these women to bring about change? And how is that change to be accomplished? The factory owners, willing to allow Emmeline access on behalf of the Ministry of Information are not quite so welcoming when Emmeline starts asking the tougher questions. However, she and Bunty persist. "When I was growing up, my mother always said to be nice to the people you like, and nicer to the ones you don't."

While Dear Mrs. Bird is all about friendship, this book expands the focus to be solidarity amongst women.  It is an engaging story and inspiring at the same time. It is also very much the second book in the series. The background of the first one - the blitz, Mrs. Bird, Bunty's history - are an important undermining to this story. Since I know the first story, I cannot fully say how this story would ready without that background. Now, having read both, I look forward to seeing where the author takes this next. 

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Dear Mrs. Bird

Title:  Dear Mrs. Bird

Author:  AJ Pearce

Publication Information:  Scribner. 218. 288 pages.

ISBN:  1501170066 / 978-1501170065

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "When I first saw the advertisement in the newspaper I though I might actually burst."

Favorite Quote:  "Replying to readers was a careful business, and not just because I was worried about getting caught. Worse even that this would be giving duff advice that made things sorrier for a reader..."

Dear Mrs. Bird manages a careful balance of the adventures and misadventures of a young woman and a story set in wartime London. Emmeline Lake is a young woman living through the nightly air raids in World War II London.

In her personal life, Emmeline shares a London flat with her best friend Bunty. They both contribute to the war effort as volunteers who answer phones for the fire services. The war and the Blitz mean that the calls for fires come suddenly and often. Their close friend and Bunty's fiance is a volunteer fireman. Through this perspective, the book grounds itself in what life was like in World War II London.

Professionally, Emmeline's dream is to be a journalist - a Lady War Correspondent as she puts it. She find what she thinks is the perfect job advertisement. She responds and is hired. Unfortunately, the job is not quite what she envisioned. She is hired by a journalistic enterprise, but her actual job is not as a war correspondent or really any kind of correspondent. The job is as a typist for the woman who answers letters in an advice column.

Henrietta Bird has very strict rules about "pleasant" and "unpleasant." Translate that to read "proper" and "improper" as determined by Mrs. Bird. She, of course, only answers reader letters that contain  no unpleasantness. Even in those cases, the responses are curt and following a very strict code of conduct. Emmeline disagrees. She sees the letters - even those or maybe especially those with "unpleasantness" - as voices asking for help. She cannot resist the call and decides to surreptitiously go further.

In this context is Emmeline's real story. On the one hand, it is a light-hearted story of friendship, social outings, conversations about bosses, and family. On the other hand, it is a serious and often heartbreaking story of war and the death and destruction it brings. The two worlds almost seem separate, until they catastrophically collide. Interestingly, the book manages to maintain a tone in which both the joy of a young, independent woman and the sorrow of war manage to coexist and not clash. The joy does not undermine the seriousness of the tragedy of war; it rather reinforces the strength of people who manage to find joy no matter what the circumstances. In other words, I manage to laugh and cry in this book.

Ultimately, Dear Mrs. Bird is a story of friendship and the ability of a true friendship to survive whatever life throws at it. Emmeline is young and at times innocent and naive. At the same time, her heart is in the right place, and she genuinely cares and tries to help. The book reminds you time and again that the war touched all lives. The resiliency of the characters is a testament to the Londoners who lived through the Blitz. It seems odd to characterize a book set in the middle of wartime London as sweet, but that is the note this book strikes.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Mrs. Porter Calling

Title:  Mrs. Porter Calling

Author:  AJ Pearce

Publication Information:  Scribner. 2023. 320 pages.

ISBN:  1668007711 / 978-1668007716

Rating:   ★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Margaret and I had been tap-dancing in the garden for nearly twenty minutes, and I was beginning to feel the strain."

Favorite Quote:  "We can only do our best .. and leave it at work when we go home."

Mrs. Porter Calling is the third book in the series, The Emmy Lake Chronicles. The series chronicles the story of a young woman - one who wants to be a journalist and a war correspondent - in World War II London. The books find a balance of the grim story of war and of the feel good story of a group of friends who are like family and the joy and comfort they find in each other even in dark time.

Dear Mrs. Bird brings Emmy, with her dreams of being a journalist, to a job at a magazine as a typist for a women's advice column. Emmy manages to find a way to put her own spin on her job. Yours Cheerfully takes an even more serious tone as it explores the role of women in the wartime effort and the gender discrimination and expectations they face. it explores the challenges they face and the resilience of these women to create change.

This book brings the story back to that of the magazine at which Emmy works. The magazine is changing ownership, and with that comes change. Journalistic integrity and the whole premise of the magazine and its audience is at risk.

Emmy and her friends are in a race against time to save the magazine and its mission. "You can have all the fancy vision in the world, but it's the readers who matter. Muck them about and there won't be a Woman's Friend."

Although each of these books can stand alone, reading the series as a series provides necessary background and shows the progression of the characters. Without having read the first two books, I am not sure I would have "gotten" all the characters or relationships.

Of the three books, this one is the least about the wartime London setting. In fact, I feel that the book could have been set anywhere in time and place. This book is about business world and about the people passionate about an institution trying to save it from those who seek change for the sake of change and who would destroy something special in the process. Given the 1940s London setting, this book and the conflict also becomes about the British class structure.

Given the tone and tenor of all three books, I suspect going in how the book will end. It delivers that sweet story, but I would have appreciated something unexpected and unpredictable.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.