Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel (1) (The Emmy Lake Chronicles)
Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel (1) (The Emmy Lake Chronicles) book cover

Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel (1) (The Emmy Lake Chronicles)

Hardcover – July 3, 2018

by
Price
$17.02
Format
Hardcover
Pages
288
Publisher
Scribner
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1501170065
Dimensions
6 x 1 x 9 inches
Weight
1.2 pounds

Description

An Amazon Best Book of July 2018: In this funny, uplifting novel set during the London Blitz, first-time author AJ Pearce shows herself to be a master of wartime vernacular speech and period charm. Though Emmeline Lake, Pearce’s outspoken narrator, dreams of becoming a serious journalist, she rashly accepts a job as junior secretary to “Mrs. Bird,” a women’s advice columnist whose views on behavior are as outmoded as her tweeds. Mrs. Bird won’t deign to reply to readers with real-world problems, but Emmeline can’t resist offering them the support she knows they need. Before long, she’s writing back on her employer’s stationary, and her well-intentioned counsel begins to threaten her relationships at work and at home. Nighttime bombing raids bring danger and pathos to this otherwise giddy, delectable story. If you enjoyed Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand or Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven , Dear Mrs. Bird might be your favorite book of the summer. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review “Perfect wartime details, but it’s the voice that really makes this debut shine. A tragicomedy set amid falling bombs, it’s a jaunty, heartbreaking winner.” — People “Funny, fresh, and touching, Dear Mrs. Bird is a pitch-perfect pleasure. It’s a rare and wonderful thing to read a book that seems to live properly in its era.” — Annie Barrows, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society “A marvelous treat. Charming and delightful.” — Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina “A joy from start to finish. Dear Mrs. Bird is as funny as it is heartwarming.” — John Boyne , author of The Heart's Invisible Furies “Books that make you shake with laughter and sob with tears are rare. I gulped this one down but didn’t stop thinking about it for a long time.” — Katie Fforde , author of A Secret Garden “Charming and funny.” — New York Post “There is more to this very English novel than first meets the eye . . . a delightful read — funny and poignant . . . It is about the home front during war, yes, but even more it is about the strength of women, the importance of friendship and the toll of stoicism. — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune “Vividly evocative of wartime life… a very English tribute to the women of the homefront.” — Kirkus “Fans of Jojo Moyes will enjoy Pearce’s debut, with its plucky female characters and fresh portrait of women’s lives in wartime Britain.” — Library Journal "Set against a backdrop of war-torn London, this is a charming and heartfelt novel. Pearce brings to life a tale of true friendship, and how love will outlast even the most challenging times." — Booklist "The sweetest, most uplifting, lovely book about courage, friendship, love." —Marian Keyes "Clever... The novel has a wonderfully droll tone, a reminder of the exuberance of youth even under dire circumstances. Headlined by its winning lead character, who always keeps carrying on, Pearce’s novel is a delight." — Publishers Weekly "Emmeline Lake, the heroine of Dear Mrs. Bird , is the most endearing character to emerge from the world of British fiction since Bridget Jones. She’s funny, she’s indefatigable, and she faces the worst of circumstances with the pluckiest of resolves. You cannot help but love her."— Kimmery Martin, author of The Queen of Hearts "A winning wartime romp, as hilarious as it is moving . . . the novel's spirit is madly winning, and its foregrounding of wartime women seems spiffingly modern." — The Guardian “Books that make you shake with laughter and sob with tears are rare. I gulped this one down but didn’t stop thinking about it for a long time.” — Katie Fforde , author of A Secret Garden “This funny, poignant story set during the London Blitz is already a reader favorite . . . imbued with the voice and attitudes of the war years; it's clear Pearce is an expert in that era.” —Sarah Smith, Omnivoracious “Utterly charming and helplessly funny.” — Jenny Colgan, author of The Bookshop on the Corner AJ Pearce grew up in Hampshire, England. She studied at the University of Sussex and Northwestern University. Her collection of over 800 vintage women’s and news magazines is the inspiration for her series The Emmy Lake Chronicles, which includes Dear Mrs. Bird, Yours Cheerfully , and Mrs. Porter Calling . She lives in the south of England. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • This charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about a young woman who longs to be a war correspondent and inadvertantly becomes a secret advice columnist is “a jaunty, heartbreaking winner” (
  • People
  • )—for fans of
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
  • and
  • Lilac Girls
  • .
  • Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty are doing their bit for the war effort and trying to stay cheerful, despite the German planes making their nightly raids. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent, and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance; but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, renowned advice columnist of
  • Woman’s Friend
  • magazine. Mrs. Bird is very clear: letters containing any Unpleasantness must go straight into the bin. But as Emmy reads the desperate pleas from women who many have Gone Too Far with the wrong man, or can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she begins to secretly write back to the readers who have poured out their troubles. “Fans of Jojo Moyes will enjoy AJ Pearce’s debut, with its plucky female characters and fresh portrait of women’s lives in wartime Britain” (
  • Library Journal
  • )—a love letter to the enduring power of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary times. “Headlined by its winning lead character, who always keeps carrying on, Pearce's novel is a delight” (
  • Publishers Weekly
  • ). Irrepressibly funny and enormously moving,
  • Dear Mrs. Bird
  • is “funny and poignant…about the strength of women and the importance of friendship” (
  • Star Tribune
  • , Minneapolis).

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(4.2K)
★★★★
25%
(3.5K)
★★★
15%
(2.1K)
★★
7%
(987)
★
23%
(3.2K)

Most Helpful Reviews

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A treasure

This story was so much more than I imagined. My father was in the RAF, mid-upper gunner, during 1944 but he told me about the terrible bombing inflicted on London for months on end in 1940. This author has captured the endurance necessary and positive thinking while still sharing the effects of terrible loss and grief. I find I shall read this more than once or twice to experience the time in London during 1940 very up close and personal.
12 people found this helpful
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Juvenile writing!

Just fluff. Probably more appropriately labeled Young Adult fiction. Serious readers, don't waste your money or time.
12 people found this helpful
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and is good for an interesting turn of phrase and many well-chosen ...

AJ Pearce’s debut novel Dear Mrs. Bird is a touching look into the lives of several twenty-somethings living in London amidst the blitz of 1940. The protagonist Emmy Lake has always wanted to enter the exciting world of journalism, and with the war on, she sees herself reporting in the most dangerous of locations. But the job she interviews for and accepts is far from dangerous and far from what she expected.

Emmy’s new position entails combing through the mail of a cantankerous advice columnist who has very strict rules as to what types of letters to which she will respond. Emmy empathizes with the women who write into the magazine and may take matters into her own hands. Pearce adds healthy doses of romance, heartbreak, and tragedy as Emmy and her friends make their way through war-time London.

Pearce’s writing is a welcome trip back in time, and is good for an interesting turn of phrase and many well-chosen British idioms. While reading the character of Emmy Lake, one can picture Honeysuckle Weeks in her role as Sam Stewart in Foyle’s War. She is full of pluck and gumption in her job with Mrs. Bird as well as her time taking calls for the local fire brigade.

While the novel might be predictable at times, the character of Emmy is too good to not keep reading. At its heart, Dear Mrs. Bird is wonderful little book that posits work, romance, friendship, and a stiff upper lip during a time of great strife, and comes away a very enjoyable experience.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Scribner, and AJ Pearce for the advance copy for review.
4 people found this helpful
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When the world was crazy and unstable, kindness, friends and a sense of humor saw us through. Balm for the soul.

The world is falling down around her, literally, but when Emmy lands her dream job at the London Chronicle, she fantasizes that her reporting will change the course of World War II. Unfortunately, her job is actually at Women's Friend, a failing tabloid, screening letters for Mrs. Bird, a deranged advice columnist who refuses to answer letters about any Unpleasantness. But it's 1941 in London, bombs are falling around them, and there is nothing but Unpleasantness. So Emmy, chin up and bomb helmet on, decides to tackle the Unpleasantness herself. If Mrs. Bird won't help people, Emmy will. With her best friend Bunty by her side, and a growing array of friends, Emmy decides to change the lives of the people of London, one letter at a time. Just don't let Mrs. Bird find out what she's doing...

I love a good comfort read, and that's exactly what this is. In the vein of Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society, or 84 Charing Cross Road, this is an old fashioned story about good people trying to make the most of bad times. Ms. Pearce does a wonderful job bringing to life what it was like for people to live in London during 1941, the nuts and bolts of brothers and fiancees who are off at war, parents trying to act like everything is normal, sussing out a good bomb shelter location, hiding under your desk at the volunteer fire station when the bombs hit, but still reaching above your head to answer the phone when people call for help. When our own world feels kind of crazy and unstable, it is balm to the soul to read about another world that was crazy and unstable, and how simple kindness, humor and friendships, saw people through. I read it wanting to feel better about the world, and that's exactly what happened. Hooray.
4 people found this helpful
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There Will Always Be An England

As a first novel, this one is Top Notch. It captures the soul of those enduring the Blitz in 1941 London.

Em, the heroine, along with her best friend Bunty, has moved from a small town to London to assist with the War Effort, and she dreams of a Career as a War Correspondent. All important words begin with Capital Letters in Em's mind.

The first half of the book is vastly amusing. Em accidentally accepts a job as the assistant to Mrs. Bird, the overbearing advice columnist at a women's magazine. Mrs. Bird ignores pleas from women who are troubled by Unacceptable Topics, which includes just about everything except questions about cooking or skin care. Everyone else needs to take Brisk Walks and have a Cheerful Attitude.

Em, a deeply empathetic person, wants to aid those who write in with cries for help.

The characters are delightful, from spunky Em to Clarence, the adolescent mailroom boy struggling to keep his voice from rising up an octave and plummeting down every time he speaks to Kathleen, the secretary he adores from afar.

Bur WWII, of course, was not a comedy--with Mel Brooks providing the exception--so the latter part of the book has Em facing the horrors the war inflicts on the homefront and having to sort through her own feelings and courses of action. Brisk Walks are not enough.

Em is a wonderful, naive, and often unreliable narrator. She is surrounded by a cast of well-drawn secondary characters with whom readers would love to chat at a tea room over tea and whatever accompanying treats the proprietor had managed to assemble in spite of rationing and shortages.
4 people found this helpful
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A lively heroine for wartime London

A delightful novel -- an intelligent bit of escape fiction as only the British can pull off. Reminded me of Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce series. Flavia is much younger, but she gets into scrapes and muddles through ... and so does Emmeline. And I'm reminded of the television series, Duchess of Duke Street, which had several episodes placed in an earlier war.

Emmeline is one of those young women who's ahead of her time. Craving excitement and a real career, she'd love to be a war correspondent. So it seems like fate when she sees an ad for a job in a newspaper office. She doesn't read the ad carefully: she dashes off an application immediately, and she's hired with equal speed.

To her dismay, Emmy isn't working in the war correspondent section, or even dealing with real news. She's sorting and typing for a curmudgeonly "editress," Mrs. Henrietta Bird. Mrs. Bird's claim to fame is a precursor of Dear Abby: she writes an advice column, but she only responds to letters she considers proper. Emmeline, naive as she is, has the sense to realize what real readers want: the good stuff, with stories of broken relationships, unrequited love, unwanted pregnancies and yes ... affairs of the heart.

Believing these well-intentioned readers need help Emmy answers them herself. (Not a spoiler - it's in the jacket copy.) She's a natural, although sometimes she's out of her depth.

Naturally she has her trusted female sidekick, one Bunty Tavistock, whose granny conveniently lets them live comfortably in London, rent-free. Besides the office, she and Bunty enjoy some light-hearted romance as well as some sad - even tragic - experiences.

The ending was particularly well done: satisfying and appropriate to the novel, yet not trite, and the author apparently resisted temptation to whoosh everything together into an unambiguously happy cloud of joy.

The rating really could be 4.5 stars; the pace was a little on the slow side and somewhere in the middle I was ready to get on with the ending. If I'd been on an airplane, reading the book to escape my surroundings, I'd probably have felt differently.

The characters aren't quite three-dimensional; we get a fairly good sense of Emmy, but don't know much about Bunty or the various people who people Emmy's world. The people in the publishing company aren't quite flat but they don't fully come to life either. That's not really essential, of course, in this kind of novel.

If you're looking for a lively romp, a tale that makes wartime England seem very real (the way they get used to bombs seems particularly genuine), a spunky heroine and a gentle pace... this is your book. I'm eager to see the author's next one myself.
4 people found this helpful
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Delightful and lovely book!

I enjoyed this book so much. Humorous and lighthearted while still conveying the struggles and heartbreak of living in London during the Blitz.
3 people found this helpful
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She is glad to feel useful but she really wants to become ...

During the Blitz in London, Emmy is doing “her bit.” She works as a dispatch officer for bomb response firefighters. She is glad to feel useful but she really wants to become a serious war journalist. When she spots an ad for a part-time position at a newspaper, Emmy jumps at the opportunity to get her foot in the door. After a brief, distracted interview, she takes the job, but on her first day she learns it isn’t quite what she thought she signed up for.

Emmy has been hired to help sort reader letters for the advice columnist Mrs. Bird. A gruff, old-fashioned woman, she refuses to answer anything that references the “unpleasantness.” She really only shares household tips and recipes, which Emmy is sure is one of the reasons the circulation is so low. Frustrated by Mrs. Bird and determined to help the desperate inquirers, she begins to send replies by mail, signing Mrs. Bird’s name.

Meanwhile Emmy and her roommate Bunty try to navigate the day-to-day life of simply being a young woman living in the city — meeting men, worrying about families back home, holding down a job, making do and altering hand-me-down clothing — all while living in the midst of the Blitz.

The book is a fairly light read, considering the heavy topics. Told from Emmy’s point-of-view, it takes too long to get to the meat of the story. Emmy dithers about how to handle the letter replies until at least a third of the way into the book. Additionally, the final resolution is very predictable though it is somewhat forgivable since the book is meant to ultimately be a feel-good story.

The characters are fairly strong but their actions are a bit to generic for me. Why is Mrs. Bird so strait-laced? What does Mr. Collins love about writing fiction? What ultimately happens with Emmy’s brother? It would have made for a more emotional story if the reader for to see just a bit more of what made each character tick. I think this could have been done without bogging down the light style.

For such a specific place and time in history, the setting also didn’t feel very real. In only a couple of tense scenes did I begin to get a sense of the backdrop. Perhaps the author felt knowing it was 1940 London was enough for the reader.

Overall, it was an enjoyable if somewhat lightweight read. It felt unpolished some of the time but it moves at a brisk pace.
3 people found this helpful
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Easy WWII novel

Sweet story but not deep. About two young girls in London during WWII.
2 people found this helpful
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Made me laugh and cry

This novel begins on a light note, with an aspiring journalist in London applying for a job that she believes will allow her to realize her dream of becoming a war correspondent. It turns out she is mistaken, which she learns only after she lands quite a different job with a women's magazine. It then evolves into a gripping, detailed account of life in London during the Blitz, for the heroine and her circle. I couldn't put it down. It made me both laugh and cry. What a reminder of what the British endured. I really recommend this book, plucky heroine and all.
2 people found this helpful

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