“Good Evening, Mrs. Craven” by Mollie Panter-Downes

This book is a collection of short stories, originally published in the New Yorker magazine during the second World War. The author was a prolific writer for the magazine throughout her career, submitting a wide range of work including poems, book reviews, London Letters, and Letters from England, as well as these short stories.

The twenty-one stories in this collection are vignettes of Middle England through the war, briefly chronicling the experiences and emotions of her subjects. The stories range from light-hearted, almost wickedly observed meetings of a Red Cross sewing party, to the melancholy tale of a lonely, isolated civil servant, to the sparkling joy of a young bride finally stepping out from the shadow of her sister. The characters are perceptively observed, and the wit and compassion of the writer jumps of the page all the while shrewdly documenting wartime England, and the state of the nation.

Persephone Books are fast becoming my fail safe method of ensuring I read entertaining, intelligent, beautifully written books, and this was no exception. I don’t read a lot of short stories, but these were an absolute joy, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to others.

“The Post Office Girl” by Stefan Zweig

In the bleak years following World War One, Christine is one of the lucky few with a job in an economically destroyed Austria; she’s a civil servant working in a provincial post office in a safe government job. At 28, she’s working full time, both at the post office and at home, where she’s caring for her sick mother, and has no prospects or expectations for the future. One day, Christine receives a telegram from an American aunt, inviting her to join her aunt and uncle in a resort in the Swiss Alps. A few days later, she arrives at the hotel and is immediately transported into a care-free world of wealth and luxury, and her transformation begins. Abruptly, rumours and jealousy cast a shadow over her, and the dream of a different life is cut short, sending her back to the post office, but with a new outlook on life.

The manuscript for this novel was found amongst the authors papers after he’d died in 1942, and was published posthumously. I’m not sure exactly when he wrote it, but I’m guessing in the 1930′s, and what I find incredible, is how modern the book feels. Although this is a modern translation, I can’t imagine any translator would attempt to alter the style or language of the original work, so I’m assuming this is a true representation of the authors manuscript, and as such it is a great piece of writing. I felt as though the story and characters could be transplanted into a modern day setting, and would still be just as relevant as the post-WWI Austria and Switzerland Zweig has represented.

Christine’s story reveals an emotional journey from resignation, to the awakening to hope and joy, through confusion and embarrassment, and finally the anger and despair of a young woman who has glimpsed the wonders that the world can hold, only to have it all snatched away. It is the transition of a young woman who has never had the opportunity to fulfil her potential, whose naivety and joy is a breath of fresh air amongst the wealth and riches of the hotel guests, but is her downfall as jealousy rears its ugly head, and she is plunged back into her old life with little hope of an escape back to the colourful, care-free world she knows is out there.

The way the author writes from Christine’s point of view feels very real, and the emotional rollercoaster we are taken on is the heart of this book, while it always has an eye on the sociological issues of the period as the backdrop to the story. Christine’s thought processes, drifting fluidly or flitting quickly, are written with clarity and feel very honest.

As the book was not submitted as a finished manuscript by the author himself, we can’t be sure if this was the completed book he’d planned. The denouement of the book concludes in a very abrupt manner, but I hope it was how the author intended it to end. It doesn’t try to end the story and leaves the reader to decide how they think the lives of the characters will continue, yet instead of leaving me wanting more, wanting to know what happened next, I thought the single world last sentence was the most satisfying ending to a book I’ve read in recent times.

“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book tells the individual stories of three people living through the Nigerian-Biafran war in the 1960′s. Ugwu’s family have found him the position of houseboy with Odenigbo, a university professor, with outspoken views on politics who not only employs Ugwu, but also arranges for his education. Ugwu is enchanted with his new master and in awe of the debates he overhears in the house, discussing the political, sociological and philosophical state of their country. Keen to impress, he undertakes his duties and his schooling with equal vigour, always looking out for his masters best interests. Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna, soon moves in with him, and on a visit to her family home, we learn about her parents and her twin sister, Kainene, and the expectations placed on both daughters by their parents. They are an affluent family and Olanna is expected to use her beauty and position to improve the family business and their social and political connections, a situation Olanna finds distasteful. Kainene, meanwhile, accepts that whilst they are twins, they are not identical, and without Olanna’s beauty, she has to use her head to make her way in the family business, but for Richard, an English writer who is on an extended trip to Nigeria to research his next work, she is completely captivating, and their relationship brings him into the lives of Olanna and Ugwu through the social gatherings at Odenigbo’s house.

The novel continues to tell their stories, and part two of the book moves us forward to the late 1960′s at the start of the Nigerian-Biafran war, and chronicles how the lives of the three people are impacted by the atrocities they experience and are witness to. The book then jumps back to where part one left off, and we are back in the early sixties. Finally the books moves back to where part three finished during the late sixties and the end of the war, and we discover three very different people from those we started out with.

This book took me a long time to read. I’m usually a fast reader and would have expected this book to take me probably three days, but no more than a week, yet for some reason, I found it difficult to keep concentrating long enough to carry on reading, and it actually took me three weeks to finish. The main characters were interesting, but not compelling; the story was also interesting, but not engrossing. Although I realise the book was set around the three main protagonists, I felt that Odenigbo and Kainene were so integral to the plot, but they were underwritten and not developed enough. I also did not like the device of moving back to the early sixties in part three, and then returning to the late sixties later on. I didn’t feel it added anything to how the characters developed, and while it filled in details to plot lines during the missing years between part one and two that I think we were made to have the wrong assumptions about, I don’t feel it added to the plot, and it actually annoyed me slightly.

For me, it didn’t work. The main characters were well written and I liked the narrative switching between each one in turn, but I didn’t like the style or the choices about the secondary character development, and although it was interesting to read about a savage war I knew nothing about, I just didn’t find it compelling, and a struggle to finish.

“Suite Française” by Irène Némirovsky

Born in Russia at the turn of the century, Irene Nemirovsky’s wealthy Jewish family fled from Kiev in 1918, eventually ending up in France in 1919. Her critically acclaimed novels David Golder and Le Bal were published in the 1929 and 1930 respectively, but she and her husband were denied French citizenship in 1938 and her husband and two daughters had to evacuate to a small Burgundy village in 1941. According to notes left, she started writing a five volume suite of novels based around the events of the second world war, but arrested in 1942, only days after completing the second volume, she was transported to Auschwitz where she died a month later of typhus. Her daughters escaped, and one of them took with her the things her mother had always treasured most, a small suitcase containing photographs and diaries, and a leather binder which had hardly ever left her mothers side. Unaware of what it contained, it was only in the 1970′s that her daughter, Denise, opened the binder and the case, and planning to donate them to the publishing industry’s archives but wanting to make a copy first, she started to read the diaries and notes, and transcribe the contents. It was only then she realised that two of the five novels had been completed. These were published in 2004 as Suite Francaise.

The first novel Storm In June is a chaotic, panicked tale of the exodus of Paris in June 1940. Echoing the state of mind of those people involved, the story frenetically switches between the various families, couples and individuals, focusing mainly on the wealthy and middle classes who too are concerned with saving their precious possessions at the same time as maintaining their position within their class, and paints a harsh, cruel light on their selfish journeys. She is more gentle when dealing with the middle aged couple who work for a bank, and are told to travel to Tours where the bank is being temporarily relocated, but are abandoned by their selfish employer and told to make the journey themselves, with the threat of being fired if they do not make their destination. Although I can understand the style used is meant to echo the chaos and uncertainty of the situation the characters find themselves in, it makes a difficult story to follow, flitting between the various protagonists of each journey with a swift rapidity. Each character is vividly drawn though, although not all their stories are concluded, as some of them are present in the second novel, and it may be that the other individual stories would have been continued in the unwritten three novels of the suite.

Dolce is a calmer, more contemplative piece about a rural village under German occupation. It follows the inhabitants and the different attitudes that the various generations and classes have to their occupiers, as well as giving an insight into the individual German soldiers and their experiences and thoughts about their role in this community. The locals are forced to come to terms with the invaders, some barely out of boyhood, and a uneasy compromise is reached between the two groups. Events unfold slowly and by the end of the novel, a violent action breaches the trust that has grown in the village, forcing all parties to re-evaluate their relationships. Lyrical and poetic at times, honest and brutal at others, Dolce feels the more accomplished of the two novels. Beautiful to read, engrossing and engaging, I loved every page.