Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, Read by Orlagh Cassidy

I would like to think that I would be like Frankie in this novel if I lived in the 1940s. Frankie is an American radio reporter and she wants to travel to England during the bombings in the 1940s to report the news back to America. She does, and she's good at it. She pulls at the heartstrings of the Americans, and tries her best to get them involved in the war, even though we were trying to ignore the Germans. Frankie travels the trains in France and interviews hundreds of Jews--all escaping from their homes and trying to get as far away as possible. Meanwhile, America is ignoring the problem.

There are other subplots involved in this novel, but Frankie's is what spoke to me. There isn't much battle in this book--just the people who were bombed and people fleeing their homes. Yet it speaks powerfully about the horrors of war. I really felt like I was in an English bomb shelter at times, and the fear in the French trains was easily felt by the reader. I actually could have done without the postmistress--give me more Frankie!

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