Winter Reads...

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake - 3 stars ***

This was another book that was given to me to read by my grandma. She will read pretty much anything, so it is often hit and miss with whether it will be a decent read or not. This wasn't awful, but it was a bit bland and didn't really seem to get anywhere interesting, despite being fairly long.

It is set during WWII and follows the stories of three women each dealing with the conflict in their own way. There is Iris, the Postmistress of a small town in Cape Cod, America, Frankie Bard, an American journalist in London doing broadcasts on the war for people back at home, and Emma, who is the wife of a doctor who is working in London. The stories intertwine when Iris opens a letter telling of the death of Emma's husband, who died in a car accident in front of Frankie whilst she was reporting. Very convenient.

The main problem with this book is that there wasn't much to make you become emotionally involved with the characters. In such horrific circumstances as a world war, one would expect to feel a great deal of sympathy for the victims of such a tragedy. This didn't happen, as all of the people in the book were quite one sided and didn't appear to have enough depth to them to seem real. The only people I felt any connection to were the refugees on the train recorded for Frankie's broadcasts, and they were mentioned for all of two chapters!

Despite the lack of involvement in the plot, the one good thing about this book is the gorgeous language that Blake uses throughout. She truly has a gift with words - I have read an awful lot of books, and her descriptions are very original, and her metaphors are unique yet make complete sense after one read. It is perhaps through the language that the most emotive aspects become more alive: 

'If you hold this in your hand, I will never hold that hand again. And the thought of that is unimaginable--impossible, because you are so real. And because I am. Here is my hand holding down the page, here is the other hand, writing' (a letter from Emma's husband to her, to be opened in the incident of his death)

'But i have covered far too many wars--reporting how they were seeded, nourished, and let sprout--to believe in angels anymore, or, for that matter, in a single beam of truth to shine into the dark. Every story--love or war-- is a story about looking left when we should have been looking right.'