In December 1940, Emmy Lake is on the tram returning home from her job as a secretary at Strawman's solicitors. She dreams of becoming a lady war correspondent and flying around the world, reporting from far flung places, and imagines it a heroic profession. She is reading the adverts and jobs wanted sections of the Evening Chronicle, having read the news. Emmy chances across a job advertised for a Junior at the Launceston Press Ltd - the owners of the Evening Chronicle - it is a sign of her dream coming true. She decides to send off a letter of enquiry and gets an interview.
What the advert does not indicate is that the Junior being sort is for Mrs Bird and not in the main newspaper. Emmy gets to the offices of the paper and is directed up to the floor of the 'Women's Friends' Magazine. She takes in the dreary and thread bare decor but with her mind of the 'glitz' of reporting the war, she ignores the signs that not all is it should be. After an interview with Mr Collins who steps in for Mrs Bird when she's away from the office. His questions are nothing to do with the war, but Emmy is so determined to get the job that she ignores this oversight.
She comes away with the job, and looks forward to her first day as a junior, ready to prove her worth and work her way up to her dream job.
On the first day of her job Emmy encounters Kathleen and begins to fit the pieces together. The job however she feels could lead to her dream job, so she is determined to do all she can to gain a promotion. Her job involves typing up the answers to the problems she is prepared to answer. Emmy is also charged with ensuring the only problems Mrs Bird recieves are on her short list of acceptable ones, and to dispose of the others in the bin, cutting them up before hand.
Emmy cannot understand why those who gathered the courage to ask for help, who may have no one else they can ask are treated so harshly by Mrs Bird in her answers to them. And why so many problems are deemed unacceptable when they are problems so many people have, and are so widely shared with the war and its impact on lives. So she begins to write back to those who send in stamps, using Mrs Birds' name.
She tells her best friend and flatmate Bunty, who grew up with her. Bunty thoroughly disproves and Emmy promises her she will stop, but knows in heart she won't. So secrets and shenanigans arise from her secret begin to arise. As does life under the blitz, it's gentleness, fun and devastation.
Mrs bird's formidable presence shouts from the page as much as her shouts resound around the office, and anywhere she is. She hops in and out of the office, in between good work. Mrs Bird is the only one who can do anything, without her the world would fall apart.
Emmy in contrast is quiet, gentle and caring, yet is also lacking lived experience of the world. Her view of the wars has been in some ways secondhand, she reads letters from her brother and boyfriend about their duties. As a fire-station telephone operator, she hears of the devastation bombs and firs have caused, but has experienced little of that devastation herself. She walks past bombed houses and shops, yet it is after the action and is in some sanitised. Yet when she experiences heartbreak and devastation she begins to grow, and this can be seen in her understanding of the problems people are writing in with.
Bunty is more worldly, this could be because she works at the war office and is part of the hush hush of the war effort, so sees and speaks to those who see action. Yet when devastation occurs she goes into herself and struggles to cope, which any of us I feel would in the circumstances.
They both however as the book progresses grow in character and friendship.
This book has several areas of laughter. one is when Emmy is with Bunty queuing for a seat in a Tea House and sees Mr Collins who beckons them over. She is surprised to find that he has a younger half-sibling. The scene is written like a sketch and I can see many comics plying the roles to their funniest.
Throughout the book there is a mixture of emotions which has your heart being wrung and then laughing.
I also learnt more about the role of women in the war, which was an interesting tangent.
For a roller-coaster ride of life in 1940/41 then read in the comfort of your home, but be warned the bombs falling around you can be heard.
