Your Current Read and Fairy Lights

I’ve actually just finished reading this but I thought it was close enough. Mrs Porter Calling is the third book in the Emmy Lake series; which started with Dear Mrs Bird and continued with Yours Cheerfully. The latest instalment was published by Picador in May this year and, as I’d pre-ordered it, it was delivered to me on publication day. As it happened that was also the day I had a small operation and had to remain in hospital overnight. I looked forward to getting home and devouring my new book.

In the event, though, when I got home I had no concentration and couldn’t read anything. Even a week later I was struggling to read for any length of time. I kept on picking this up, opening it and then putting it down again. For about six months, it sat on a table looking as though it were being read but in reality it was being ignored. And there it sat until just a couple of days ago. And it was really just tidiness that spurred me on to read it!

Now that I have finished it, I can hardly believe that I waited so long. It was as wonderful as I expected it to be when I ordered it. The war has reached April 1943 as the novel begins. Emmy is still working for the Woman’s Friend as its agony aunt and still living with her longtime friend Bunty, and life is as good as it could possibly be, taking her husband’s absence with the army, the odd bomb and rationing into account. Then, out of the blue, the magazine’s owner dies and his niece, the eponymous Mrs Porter, takes over as publisher. Emmy, Guy and the rest of team are about to have their professional lives turned upside down.

AJ Pearce tells a superb story of wartime Britain, of laughter, of domestic troubles, of tragedy, of personal trauma and public uncertainty. There are no easy answers to life’s difficulties, no hiding from the realities of war but there is hope and humour, loyalty and friendship. I’m already looking forward to another in the series.

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