Dear Miss Lake by A. J. Pearce
The last of the four Emmy Lake chronicles. It’s July 1944. Woman’s Friend magazine has decamped to the countryside to avoid the doodlebugs. Along with her work as agony aunt, Emmy throws herself in to country life and, after an unexpected phone call, has a stint as a war correspondent. All the time, she is fearful for the safety all those she loves especially husband Charles.
You could read them in any order but best to start with Dear Mrs Bird.
May I also draw
your attention to A. J. Pearce’s Substack newsletter, Notes of Cheer, which is lovely and booky and indeed very cheering.
Two Georgette Heyers, from the Christian Aid Book Sale:
When Mary finds out that the infamous and devastatingly handsome Marquis of Vidal is planning to run away with her young sister, she sets out to save Sophy’s reputation – without losing her own. Easier said than done …
Philip wants to win the hand of the more sophisticated Cleone who wishes that he would acquire the polish she admires in other men. When he returns from Paris duly polished (and powdered and patched and shod in red high heels … ) Cleone realises that you have to be careful what you wish for.
by Helen Paris
I started off by being totally on board with this.
Dot Watson’s story is related in chapters headed with the labels put on lost items in Transport for London’s lost property office. It’s a great setting for a novel.
I was especially taken by the first label as, when I lived in London, I knew the 73 bus route well (don’t think I left anything on one though).
It was fascinating to find out how the office worked and some of the sharp observations made me laugh eg:
‘Occasionally we have to go to Transport for London “Awaydays” to stare at flip charts and listen to Lynx-doused lads in their machine-washable suits say ‘not a problem’ ad infinitum.’
But although the book is set now, ‘Dot’, a thirty-something employee in the office, began to feel like a time-traveller from several decades ago and her sad Eleanor Oliphanty back-story was dragged out. The labels device far outstayed its welcome as far as I was concerned with some chapters seeming superfluous.
Sorry, I really wanted to like it more than I did.
In which our hapless hero, smitten by a girl he meets in a bar (who’s reading a book called The Satsuma Complex), gets involved with some very dodgy people. I know of Bob M mainly through Would I Lie to You on TV, in which the most outrageous escapades from his childhood, brilliantly told, turn out to be true. Here (I assume … ) he lets his imagination off the leash.
Blackly funny with some memorable characters (looking at you, Moira) and a great plot. I see that it’s to be a TV series.
Maddie regrets her good deed in allowing Mason to move in with her temporarily when lockdown happens and she’s stuck with him as he becomes increasingly controlling. When she hears from a friend of an empty cottage she can borrow in the Scottish Borders, she makes a run for it – illegally, as travel restrictions are still in place. She believes that she’s done everything she can to cover her tracks so that Mason can’t find her …
Next to the cottage is a farm where it’s lambing season and, Cal, the farmer is struggling to cope with his work load. England to Scotland, city girl to country girl – it’s a journey both literally and metaphorically for Maddie. A great read, evoking so well the Borders countryside (it’s a love letter to farming too) and those strange years of 2020/21, along with Maddie’s palpable anxiety to begin with and her taking a chance on a new love.
