Category: 20 Books of Summer

#BookReview Yours Cheerfully by A J Pearce @PanMacPublicity

whatcathyreadnext5 Comments

Yours CheerfullyAbout the Book

London, November 1941. Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.

When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.

Format: Hardcover (352 pages)    Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 24th June 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Yours Cheerfully on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I loved Dear Mrs Bird, the book that first introduced readers to Emmeline Lake and also to the inimitable Henrietta Bird. Henrietta has departed to pastures new and Emmeline, known to most as Emmy, is getting used to her new role with greater responsibility for answering letters sent to Woman’s Friend magazine by readers seeking advice on their problems. Not only has the ‘Henrietta Helps’ column become ‘Yours, Cheerfully’ but it’s become much less judgmental as well.

I loved sitting in on the Woman’s Friend editorial meetings, chaired by the magazine’s new editor, Mr Collins, and listening to the contributions of the people who make up the team. For example, Mr Newton’s report that Hartley’s Jams are taking out a series of advertisements telling people there wasn’t any, or Mr Collins’ mention of rumours he’d heard about ‘something big coming up for blancmange’.

The war is an ever present backdrop to events especially once Woman’s Friend is invited by the Ministry of Information to join the campaign to increase the number of women volunteering for war work such as working in munitions factories. As Mr Collins says, “Let’s show the Ministry what our readers can do, and let’s look after our readers while they’re doing it!”

As Emmy gets to know more about the realities of working in a munitions factory, thanks to a chance encounter on a train, she realises the lack of appreciation for the unique challenges women face, such as balancing child-minding, shift work and long hours. She’s aggrieved as well when she finds out the women are paid less than men for doing similar work. When factory management prove uninterested in the women’s difficulties, Emmy embarks on a new campaign that results in some difficult choices and not a little subterfuge.

Although Emmy often underestimates her abilities, luckily her friend Bunty is there to buoy her up. Can I just say at this point that if everyone had a friend like Bunty then the world would be a better place and, that if Bunty was in charge of things, it would probably be a much better organized place as well.

Aside from women’s contribution to the war effort, much of the book focuses on Emmy’s personal life and her relationship with Captain Charles Mayhew, who just happens to be Mr Collins’ half-brother. Like many other women with husbands, sons or boyfriends on active service, she faces the challenge of carrying on whilst all the time dreading the arrival of that telegram reporting him missing or worse. Since plenty of ups and downs lie ahead for Emmy and others, I can’t do better than quote Bunty’s words of wisdom, “I always think that keeping your chin up isn’t that hard. You just need to lift your face. It’s your heart that takes the effort. When it falls over it can be so stubborn about getting back up.”

If Yours Cheerfully isn’t the book for the times we’re living through, I don’t know what is. I thought it was utterly delightful and I certainly finished it with a smile on my face, having shed a few tears along the way.

In three words: Engaging, heart-warming, spirited

Try something similar: There’s No Story There by Inez Holden or A Ration Book Wedding by Jean Fullerton

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

AJ PearceAbout the Author

A J Pearce grew up in Hampshire, England. Her debut novel, Dear Mrs Bird, was a Sunday Times and international bestseller and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut of the Year and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown for best historical debut. Yours Cheerfully is the second novel in The Emmy Lake Chronicles. (Photo/bio credit: Publisher author page)

Connect with A J Pearce
Website | Facebook | Twitter

#BookReview One Last Time by Helga Flatland @OrendaBooks @RandomTTours

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for One Last Time by Helga Flatland, translated by Rosie Hedger. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Orenda Books for my digital review copy.

One Last TimeAbout the Book

Anne’s life is rushing to an unexpected and untimely end. But her diagnosis of terminal cancer isn’t just a shock for her – and for her daughter Sigrid and granddaughter Mia – it shines a spotlight onto their fractured and uncomfortable relationships.

On a spur-of-the moment trip to France the three generations of women reveal harboured secrets, long-held frustrations and suppressed desires, and learn humbling and heart-warming lessons about how life should be lived when death is so close.

Format: Paperback (276 pages)     Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 24th June 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find One Last Time on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I enjoyed Helga Flatland’s previous book, A Modern Family, for its perceptive examination of the impact on the various members of one family of an unexpected announcement. The author returns to similar territory in this book using Anne’s cancer diagnosis as the starting point for an insightful exploration of how this affects her relationships with her daughter, Sigrid, her granddaughter, Mia, and other members of her family.

In fact, the strained relationships in the family go well beyond Anne. For example, Sigrid and her daughter Mia find it difficult to communicate, principally because of the breakdown many years before of Sigrid’s relationship with Mia’s biological father, Jens. Sigrid’s relationship with her current partner, Aslak, with whom she has a young son, is also showing signs of strain.

Having praised the author’s ‘spare, precise prose’ in my review of A Modern Family, I was surprised to find the writing style quite different in this book. I confess some of the long sentences made up of multiple clauses separated by commas left me craving a full stop or semi-colon. I can only assume this was a deliberate style choice by the author intended to convey the undisciplined nature of the thoughts running through the minds of the main characters. Although it did affect my reading experience a little, it didn’t prevent me being drawn into the story which unfolds in chapters alternating between the points of view of Anne and Sigrid.

A particularly touching element of the book is Anne’s relationship with her husband Gustav, incapacitated following a series of strokes, the first of which occurred when Sigrid was young. Gustav is now in a nursing home needing round the clock care. It was also interesting to see Anne reflect on the way her diagnosis has changed her role within the family. It seems to her a curious role reversal that Sigrid and Magnus (Anne’s son) are now organizing between themselves who will look after her following her operation and treatment.

The fact that Sigrid is a doctor (a General Practitioner) provides another fascinating angle to the story. Being more aware than most of the likely outcome of her mother’s illness only seems to increase Sigrid’s sense of powerlessness. At the same time, it brings to the surface memories of her childhood when her mother’s attention was on her father not her. Whether justified or not, the forgotten birthdays, unprepared packed lunches and unlaundered school uniforms have left Sigrid with a lifelong feeling of abandonment, betrayal even. This is possibly why Sigrid invests so much of her professional time in one of her patients, a troubled young woman named Frida.

As her illness progresses, Anne’s focus becomes all about leaving behind good memories for others, things that will make her family remember her with affection. It’s partly this that provokes the trip to France, a place Anne had always planned to visit with Gustav, although I didn’t find it quite the pivotal event the blurb suggests.

One Last Time explores the unexpected events that can bring chaos and confusion to a family, exposing pre-existing strains but also potentially providing the opportunity for the healing of old wounds. It’s a powerful and emotional story told with a deft touch.

In three words: Tender, perceptive, moving

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Helga Author PicAbout the Author

Helga Flatland is already one of Norway’s most awarded and widely read authors. Born in Telemark, Norway, in 1984, she made her literary debut in 2010 with the novel Stay If You Can, Leave If You Must, for which she was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Prize. She has written four novels and a children’s book and has won several other literary awards. Her fifth novel, A Modern Family (her first English translation), was published to wide acclaim in Norway in August 2017, and was a number-one bestseller. The rights have subsequently been sold across Europe and the novel has sold more than 100,000 copies. One Last Time was published in Norway in 2020, where it topped the bestseller lists, and was shortlisted for the Norwegian Booksellers Award.

About the Translator

Rosie Hedger was born in Scotland and completed her MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she graduated with a distinction in Norwegian. Rosie spent a year at the University of Oslo, taking courses in Norwegian language and literature and researching for her dissertation on contemporary Norwegian fiction. Since completing her studies, Rosie has also lived in Sweden and Denmark, and is now based in the UK.

One Last Time BT Poster