Mollie Panter-DownesKirja-arvosteluja

Imagine Mrs. Dalloway taking place during the first summer of peace after the Second World War, and you have something very similar to Panter-Downes's One Fine Day. The prose here is eerily similar to Woolf's, in fact, as well as Bowen's and even Elizabeth Taylor's, but the overarching debt here is very obviously to Woolf's novel.

Much more so than there, though, does Panter-Downes get under the skin of the class system, its destabilization after WWII, and the sense of delusion under which most privileged Brits lived during the war. While Laura holds the center, and causes Panter-Downes to focus a lot on women's changing roles in and out of the domestic sphere, comments about class and aging, class and bias, class and hypocrisy—all combined with an attention to gender—there are some very astute portraits in here, too, of a crisis in masculinity that the war prompted more so than WWI did, a sense of displacement, and, even still, a nationalistic pride and all but unfounded optimism that is never droll, trite, or sentimental.

It's a damn shame this book is out of print; even more so, that Panter-Downes has written several other novels, about which I can find hardly any information at all, anywhere. If anyone finds information out, please do comment below. This is a fantastic writer whose insight into humanity just in the aftermath of chaos is so worthwhile and prescient to read given the current political climate.

A lot of people seem to like this book. But it wasn't really for me. It's a bit melancholy and contemplative as opposed to narrative, though I did like the tone closer to the end.

It more or less felt like a series of essays on postwar Britain, placed in the minds of fictional people. The author felt that journalism was her true forte, which I can understand, because this book is plotless. It is the thoughts and feelings of a British matron, with a bit from her husband and daughter, over the course of one day. And it's mostly just remembering and comparing things from before World War II and after. Similar territory to Angela Thirkell, but with not even a hint of a plot.

By the end of the book you can tell that the husband and wife, while disappointed in their new lifestyle, are probably going to make the best of it and try to enjoy the simpler pleasures more. So I liked that. And especially the part where the woman climbs the hill above the town, a thing she hasn't done for years, marvels at the land, and takes a nap that helps to reset her mind.
However, overall it was quite slow, a book you'd have to be in the right mood for.

Mollie Panter-Downes was hired by the New Yorker magazine in the years prior to WWII to provide very short fictional stories based on real world London life for the American jet-set. As WWII came, Mollie changed her 'Letter from London' to be about life for the English left behind while the men went off to fight in the war. The letters are a collection of very short stories that focused on the mundane rather than the horror of living in the war. Some of the stories grab you, some I just quickly skimmed. I really didn't find the book as interesting as I had hoped. It's a very quick read though, so little lost.

Superb war time stories set among those Keeping the Home Fires burning while the menfolk were away..
The wealthy, struggling along minus servants; those forced to share a home with friends or evacuees; sewing parties; a wife preparing for her husband's departure..
Originally written for the American audience of the New Yorker, these are quite superb; humorous, touching and well observed.
Could anything beat this description of an unlovely working class evacuee infant:
"The baby, sitting impassively in its mother's arms, wore a dirty red knitted cap in which it oddly resembled a wizened old sans-culotte, a mummified Marat with a snotty nose."
Brilliant writing.½

“We are at peace, we will stand, we will stand when you are dust, sang the humming land in the summer evening.”

Although essentially plotless, this short novel, which unfolds on an English summer day a year after the end of World War II, is rich and satisfying, with sympathetic, well-drawn characters and fine prose, full of sharp observations. It revolves around the Marshall family—thirty-eight-year-old Laura, her husband Stephen, and their ten-year-old daughter, Victoria—who live in Wealding, a pleasant village in the commuter belt around London. The book opens at breakfast with the irascible Stephen assigning tasks to his dreamy wife before he leaves for work. Perhaps the biggest problem the once-comfortable Marshalls face is the maintenance of their large house and garden. All the young people have left domestic service for manufacturing jobs and other opportunities in the city. Weeds threaten to overtake the flower beds outside the house, and Laura, an indifferent cook and housekeeper, cannot keep order within. Even with the help of the hefty village busybody, Mrs. Prout, Laura is exhausted much of the time. The dust and spiderwebs collect, the walls look increasingly dingy, and the upholstered furniture is more threadbare and shabby than ever.

Among the tasks Stephen assigns Laura is visiting the Porters, a family that lives in a cramped hovel and breeds like rabbits. Perhaps young George Porter might be interested in employment in the Marshalls’ garden a few evenings a week. There’s also the shopping to do, some cleaning with Mrs. Prout, and the retrieval of the family dog, Stuffy, who’s likely run off to Barrow Down. A gypsy with many dogs of his own lives there in an old railway car, and it’s almost guaranteed that Stuffy will be brought home pregnant yet again.

Although there are chapters dedicated to Victoria, Stephen, and Mrs. Prout, the novel mostly follows Laura as she goes about her day. She reflects on her easeful upbringing as the child of the Herriots, staunch upholders of the British Empire in India; her choosing to marry Stephen, a businessman, rather than the more privileged well-to-do suitor her mother had selected for her; her wartime experiences alone in the house with Victoria, enlivened by the long stays of Laura’s women friends and their children who fled bombarded London for the safety of the English countryside. Mostly, though, Laura thinks about how so much has irrevocably changed since the war. She is aware of her luck in having a husband come home, when so many men did not. Other acquaintances, including a former cook, were lost in the Blitz. Canadian soldiers stationed near Wealding in wartime have left lasting reminders of their sojourn: numbers of fatherless youngsters toddling about. The landed gentry are selling up and relocating. The Cranmers, for example, who’ve lived on a beautiful estate for centuries, have accepted an offer from the National Trust. The manor house is to be used partly as a holiday hostel and partly as an agricultural training centre for boys, while old Mrs. Cranmer and her addled sister-in-law, Aunt Sophia, will be relegated to a small apartment in a made-over wing of the stables. “It’s the only possible thing for all these places,” says Edward, the only surviving Cranmer son. “I couldn’t afford to live here even if I wanted to. [ . . . ] Perhaps we’ve been here long enough. [ . . .] It’s time for a change. And look at it as it is, rotting away! That is what really broke one’s heart.”

In some ways, Panter-Downes’s novel reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Both books feature a post-war setting, impressionistic prose, and a sensitive female protagonist through whose consciousness a much-altered world is filtered. Woolf’s writing is, of course, more sophisticated—more experimental and more purely stream-of-consciousness in mode—and the inclusion of the shell-shocked soldier, Septimus Warren Smith, makes hers the more melancholy novel. One Fine Day has a lighter touch and a more buoyant tone. It focuses on a fairly conventional marriage and cast of characters, in a rural rather than urban setting, but it contains lovely lyrical writing about the natural world and some sensitive observations about change, marriage, ageing, and the endurance of the land. I really enjoyed the book.

" 'Don't think I'm being stupid and morbid,' she said, 'but supposing anything happens. I've been worrying about that. You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn't know.' She tried to laugh. 'The War Office doesn't have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?'

"He frowned, because this sounded hysterical ... With an effort, she remembered that he loved her because she was not the kind of woman to make scenes ..."

"Wartime was a period of intense and varied creativity for Mollie Painter-Downs. She was in her prime and bristling with the writer's powers of perception.

"Her best short stories do not depend on conventional action-driven plots because their sphere is psychological, emotional and social. They are brief, dramatic -- and comic -- testimonials to the ordinary English women who did not fight in the war, but lived through it as acutely as any soldier."
~~front flap

Vignettes more than short stories -- most 5 pages long, or less. But woven with amazing accuracy into the emotions of the women portrayed -- always evocative, always of a woman who you might know. Compelling and thought provoking, and well worth the read. Or the reread.

"One Fine Day" is beautifully constructed and written and I regard it as a perfect marvel.

This was the first book by this author that I really had difficulty getting through. Despite being beautiful and intriguing on a psychological and sociological level, it felt rather dull to me most of the time. It isn't really my kind of book at all, I'm afraid. I'm not sorry I read it, but would not wish to read it again or recommend it to anyone with a brief attention span.

These WWII homefront pieces that were originally published in The New Yorker were almost all from points of view that I had never read/heard before. Some of them were rather depressing, others inspiring. Again, it was educational and entertaining to read a different point of view that usual.

http://webereading.com/2017/12/a-stack-of-eight.html½

This novel is like a snapshot of a single day in the life of a British family in the aftermath of World War II. It follows Laura, Stephen, and their daughter Victoria through a hot, sunny July day in July 1946. Laura does the household chores that she had to learn to do by herself but never really mastered during the war. Stephen commutes to his office in London, and frets over the overgrown garden that he is not able to take care of adequately. Victoria is growing up as children do, heading for a future in this new post-war world. That's about it. They move through a typical day with no particular action or great drama.

The theme of change and adaptation is rooted in the history and permanence of the English countryside. The characters are faced with the social upheaval brought about by the war. The middle and upper classes were left to cope with their crumbling homes and lifestyles after the servants left during the war. The people who would have done the work have discovered new opportunities and freedoms beyond the confines of their former roles. We get a glimpse of the difficulties encountered by soldiers returning to families and homes that have evolved without them, and the families who likewise had to adjust to fit the men and their expectations back into their lives.

The writing is beautiful, with wonderful descriptions of the countryside and people of the village. Laura is a lighthearted and sympathetic character. While there is a sense of melancholy for what has been lost for some, there is also optimism for the future. Despite the lack of action, the book is enthralling, with a strong sense of time and space. For the modern reader, it casts a spotlight on a moment in the past. I wonder what it was like for the original readers back when the book was serialized and published in 1946-47.½

Set in 1946, the story follows Laura Marshall through one day of her life, a life that has been forever changed by war. The social structure has changed dramatically, one-time servants have moved on to more lucrative employment elsewhere leaving owners of grand homes having to look after themselves. Laura will adjust, although her mother and her husband may have some difficulties. Panter-Downes describes a new order that has been accepted, however reluctantly, and the future is looking generally optimistic. This memorable portrayal of an ordinary day evokes the time faultlessly.

Lovely collection of stories, from funny to sad, a little trip into life during the war for a small subset of English women.

This is the second book I've read from Persephone Books and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Filled with short stories written during WWII, these genial stories give the reader a snapshot of life during the war. Nothing earth shattering happens, they just capture a time and place perfectly.

This collection of short stories gives readers a sense of everyday life in England during WW2 - how older men, children, wives, mistresses, and others who remained on the Home Front dealt with the fear, loss, and inconveniences of war. All of the 21 stories, in some way, comment on how members of different classes viewed the now-changing structure of English society.

Whether it's about members of the upper-classes providing shelter poor London evacuees during the blitz, household servants who mind the lack of adherence to pre-war decorum, wives who feel guilt for not minding that their husbands are away at war, frustrated veterans who are too old to participate in this war, or women who have to call their boyfriends' wives covertly in order to get updates on his safety - the author masterfully evokes emotions and insights from the reader. The writing is beautiful and well-crafted.

While not non-fiction, THE WARTIME STORIES feels authentic and based completely in reality. All you need is a time machine to go back and meet Mr. Craven, the ladies of the local Women's Voluntary Services League, or the housemaid Dossie.

In this slim collection of Mollie Panter-Downes' short stories, originally published in THE NEW-YORKER between 1947 and 1965, the author explores the ways in which British society is changing post-WW2. Each of these stories were hopeful and heartbreaking in measure, with characters so vivid and real that you might see yourself or your family/friends in them. At times I had to remind myself that these were fictional, as I would have just as easily believed they were works of non-fiction.

In "Minnie's Room", an upper-class family struggles to understand why their long-time in-house cook, Minnie, is leaving them to start a life of her own. An older couple, who find that their modest income/pension no longer allows them to live comfortably in London, decide to leave and sail to a new life in South Africa in "The Exiles". In "Beside the Still Waters", siblings have to decide how and where to relocate their elderly mother and her nursemaid when the coastal convalescent home can no longer care for her. In "I'll Blow Your House Down", a young widow, still mourning the sudden death of her husband, must sell their house so that she can have money for her and their children to live. As she walks through the rooms and the garden, she experiences memories and reminders of their once-happy life together. A husband and wife bring his elderly parents (one experiences symptoms of dementia) along with them to a family, seaside holiday in "The Old People". In "What Are the Wild Waves Saying", a young child learns a valuable lesson about the true nature of love. In another child-narration story, "Intimations of Mortality", an upper-class family's governess brings her charge along with her when she pays a visit to her dying mother. The child has her first exposure to people whom are from much lower social classes from her, and her first experience with being around serious illness. In "Their Walk of Life", an upper-class family must come to terms with the surprise engagement of their daughter to a man who is from a lower class. In "The Willoughby's", the narrator observes, and then interacts with a small family party who are on holiday at the same Austrian hotel. "The Empty Place", the final story in this collection, meets Dolly, a middle-aged woman whose husband was recently and suddenly killed, and how she responds to the tragedy. Rather, the reader obtains this information from the widow's long-time friend Mr. Scoby, who may have been secretly in love with her. Through his lens, we are witness to the ways that people can gradually fade away from the sphere of someone who has experienced tragedy.

In each of these stories, there is a sense of the end of a way of life. Some event (war, illness, tragedy, etc.) has occurred and caused a dramatic shift (often unwelcomed and unwanted) that forces the character into a strange, uncomfortable, new life. While certainly tragic, there are hopeful ticks to the works that leave the reader feeling that all is not lost. The mixture of sadness and hope feels fully authentic to modern life. I would highly recommend MINNIE'S ROOM: THE PEACETIME STORIES OF MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES as a window into the concerns of British society after the end of the Second World War and beyond.

Wonderfully wittily written, with acute social perception and some really moving moments.½

Good Evening, Mrs Craven is a lovely collection of short stories published by Persephone Books. Mollie Panter-Downes made her career as a journalist, publishing 153 “Letters from London” in The New Yorker during World War II, and as a result became better known in the United States than in the United Kingdom. These short stories also appeared originally in The New Yorker. The book begins with a London letter from 1939, followed by 21 stories in chronological order of publication, and a final London letter from dated June 11, 1944 -- D-Day.

The stories describe everyday life in England during World War II and deal with “home front” issues such as rationing, housing evacuees, and saying good-bye to men departing for their service. She captured the day-to-day realities, and with wry wit acknowledged that sometimes “doing one’s bit” became a bit too much. There were two stories that stood out for me. In one, a soldier’s mistress worries about how she would be notified if he were injured or killed. In another, a woman experiences the anguish of saying good-bye. But every story is well-crafted, and while none of them had a “wow factor,” the collection was more consistent and even than most I’ve read.

Persephone have just published London War Notes, a collection of her “Letters from London,” which I am now keenly interested in reading.½

Molly Panter-Downes worked for years as a London correspondent for the New Yorker after writing one novel when she was a very young woman. It was very well received but her love was non-fiction writing for the most part until, just after the war she decided to write a book that told the story of how the war had changed England and it's residents for good. She chose to tell the story through Laura Marshall, an unassuming housewife who is struggling to make do without the services of the domestic servants who disappeared during and after the war. As she tries to maintain a good relationship with her husband, Stephen, just returned from the war, the narrative describes the events of one, very hot early summer day.

This is a brilliant book that had me laughing out loud at what are dire circumstances to this particular class of Englishman. Mrs. Prout is one last vestige of women who find themselves useful to these unfortunate people:

"It was Wednesday, one of the mornings on which Mrs. Prout came to circulate the dust a little, to chivvy grey fluff airily round the floors with a grey mop , to get down creakingly on her vast knees and scrub the kitchen. Mrs. Prout obliged several ladies in Wealding, conscious of her own value, enjoying glimpses of this household and that, sly, sardonic, given to nose tapping and enormous winks, kind, a one for whist tables and a quiet glass at the local, scornful of the floundering efforts of the gentry to remain gentry still when there wasn't nobody even to answer their doorbells, poor souls." (Page 24)

Oh my, I don't think I'll ever forget Mrs. Prout who also said, "all the trouble in this world, came from everybody knowing how to read." She is a real character. But oh so wise. In the end, Laura and Stephen have to figure out how to live in this new world to make the most of it and enjoy the life they have. And I have to wait for the delivery of my next book by Mollie Panter-Downes, Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. And I can't wait.½

There is definitely an emotional arc to the book. It begins very witty and you fall in love with the English people. There is wry commentary about everyday lives, politics, the war on it's various fronts; streetside opinions of all of it. About half way through, it begins to bog down. I'm sure it reflects the fatigue everyone was experiencing at the time, but I had to start skipping rather than reading.
I'm glad to have read the amount that I did, but I won't be finishing. Too many other books.

One Fine Day is a gem of a novel about a family's coming to terms with having survived World War II and having to live on. Taking place over the course of a single July day, the reader watches Laura, her husband Stephen, and their daughter Vicki as they attempt to navigate a world that has been irreversibly changed by the Second Wold War. Laura has to keep house without any real help besides a shared housekeeper, and Stephen can't find anyone to mind the garden. But as they go about their daily routines they realize an important truth: it's a wonderful thing to be alive.

Every time I read this book, I can't believe I've forgotten how wonderful it is. It's quite short but a gem of a novel. Anyone interested in contemporary fictional portrayals of post-war life, should definitely pick it up, as should anyone who enjoys good prose and doesn't need a lot of action. Highly recommended.

an exploration of 1 day in the lives of a 3 person family in 1946, in a london suburb.
bought in stratford.

Another book to add to my favourites for the year. This is a compilation of the articles the author wrote for The New Yorker, roughly every two weeks throughout World War II. Every article covers a variety of subjects, all very much about the war. The effects of the war on the British people, especially Londoners, are related as events unfold. Battles, international relations, politics, air raids, rationing, national defence, evacuation, morale, and the housing crisis are recurring topics.

It is fascinating to follow as the author narrates the events of the war without the benefit of foresight. On October 29, 1939, she tells us that "Food rationing is in the offing," and that "Generous allowances are promised". On December 13th, 1942, we learn that "Turkeys are difficult to find, though it's rumored that tinned ones will be available--a bleak prospect for those who can't work up any suitably seasonal emotions at the thought of getting out the yuletide can-opener." She realizes by June 15th, 1940, that it was "certain that the end of the war will find a changed--perhaps a better, possibly a less pleasant--England, in which Englishmen will no longer be able to give their loving and undivided attention to the cultivation of their gardens." I learned about things like Anderson and Morrison shelters, and the bunk beds in the tube stations.

Considering that the author was working under the constraints of censorship, she managed to pack a lot of information into her short articles. I have no way of knowing all that had to be left out, but a few things are notable. There is no mention of numbers of casualties, either at home or abroad, and no specific mention of high-casualty air raids. V-2 rockets started hitting London at the beginning of September in 1944, but it wasn't until November 16th that they she could write about them. She says, "Prime Minister Churchill's statement, which made it all right to talk about V-2 instead of cautiously referring to it as if it were something supernatural which had dropped in somehow and made a big hole in the back yard, came as a relief to the inhabitants of southern England."

Mollie Panter-Downes' writing style is understated with humourous touches, and clearly conveys national sentiment. I came away with a better overview of the war than I had before. I just wish I could have spread out my reading of it over more time, instead of having to rush through the whole war in a week.½

Sep 3, 1939: For a week, everybody in London had been saying everyday that if there wasn't a war tomorrow there wouldn't be a war. Yesterday, people were saying that if there wasn't a war today it would be a bloody shame. Now that there is a war, the English, slow to start, have already in spirit started and are comfortably two laps ahead of the official war machine, which had to await the drop of someone's handkerchief. In the general opinion, Hitler has got it coming to him.

Between 1939 and 1945 British novelist, Mollie Panter-Downes, wrote a regular column for The New Yorker entitled Letter from London. The columns written between 1939 and 1945 are collected in London War Notes and provide a fascinating glimpse into life in Britain (well, England and mainly London) during WWII.

As I've come to expect from her short story collections, Mollie Panter-Downes writes beautifully: with a light touch, but not without seriousness. The book includes a list of the major events of WWII which was helpful in understanding all of her essays although there were occasions when I had to google battles or generals to work out exactly what she was referring to. It probably sounds silly, but the more I read accounts written about or during WWII, the more it hits me that this actually happened to people within living memory. And they didn't know that it would be 1939-1945 or which side would win. The book ends with Panter-Downes' account of VE day and reading this brought tears to my eyes, even knowing that despite the war being officially over, Britain (and presumably the rest of Europe) still had years of hardship left (Simon Garfield's [Our Hidden Lives] is recommended if you want eyewitness accounts of the post-war years).

It was interesting to consider the differences between a collection of essays like this which were purposefully written for publication and something like the Mass Observation diaries collected in Simon Garfield's [We Are at War] where the diarists weren't writing for publication in the same way. Mollie Panter-Downes' writings come across as more positive and resilient than the Mass Observation diarists and I did wonder to what extent this was influenced by the fact that she was writing for an American publication, when it was clear for most of the early war that Britain desperately needed the support of America. Or whether the difference was simply that between the face you put on in public and the secret fears you might confess to your private diary.

If you're interested in the social history of WWII or the Home Front in England then this is probably essential reading, although unfortunately out of print and rather expensive second-hand.

July 5, 1942 (after yet another defeat for Britain): In these grave days, Londoners have been glad to be able to find something to crack a smile, however grim, about. It seems that some earnest fact-finding agency [....] saw fit to circulate a little house-to-house questionnaire to find out the public's reaction to the Army. [....] One of the questions asked was whom the households fancied as the outstanding general. Naturally, the agency meant a British general, but a horribly large and candid proportion of Britons picked up their pens and regretfully, though with their contrymen's typical admiration for a first-class performer in any game, wrote 'Rommel'.

An excellent collection of stories about normal, mostly middle class people during World War II. There is no action, no romance, no bombs are falling; just everyday stress and tedium on the Home Front. A few of the stories deal with evacuees and other unwelcome guests, some are about women parting with their husbands or lovers, some are about sewing parties. The characters live with loneliness, fear, and hunger, and carry on.

Although that all sounds very depressing, it really isn't. Some of it is sad, some is hopeful, and some is funny. In 'Date with Romance'(1939), a woman reunites with an old boyfriend, who keeps talking about his stomach problems: "With difficulty escaping from Gerald's stomach, which seemed to pursue the conversation like some particularly active octopus, they chatted about theatres." In 'Mrs. Ramsay's War'(1940), a woman is burdened with an invasive houseguest: "Her roguish eye implied that without her restraining chaperonage Mrs. Ramsay would be helling around Sussex, probably in the nude." This kind of humour is more prevalent in the earlier stories.

One of the most notable things I found in some of the stories was an awareness of the huge social changes that were happening. Not just the immediate wartime upheaval, but the long-term changes to the social order. In 'Year of Decision' (1944), a husband who has spent the war in an office job reflects: "Yes, everybody was in the same boat all right, although it sometimes seemed to Mark that Janet and the rest of their class were making unnecessarily heavy weather of it by refusing to recognise that they were bang in the middle of a social revolution." One of my favourite stories is 'Cut Down the Trees' (1943) about an elderly lady whose big house has been taken over by the army. Mrs. Walsingham adapts to all the changes in her home, and accepts a simpler lifestyle, while her equally elderly maid fights change and believes everything will go back to the old ways after the war.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in life during the war years.