Week 42: Henrietta's War

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Henrietta's War: News from the home front, 1939-1942, by Joyce Dennys

Isn't that front cover lovely? The whole Bloomsbury series makes me want to take them home. They're like candy. Sadly my library doesn't have them and I had to get an older edition of this book that isn't nearly so pretty, so I still haven't seen one in real life.

Anyway, during World War II Joyce Dennys had a humor column in a weekly magazine that consisted of fictional letters from a housewife on the Devon coast to her old friend on the French front. This is the first half of the collection. They are just a lot of fun to read; Henrietta writes about her friends Faith (the village flirt), Lady B (who writes a letter to Hitler every night telling him just exactly what she thinks of him), and everyone else in her village. It's all ordinary life, muddling through wartime difficulties, but made very funny. I peeked into it at work when it arrived, but had to stop because it was making me laugh too much.

I hope to get a chance to read Henrietta's further adventures sometime soon--and some of the rest of those yummy Bloomsbury books.

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