Henrietta Sees It Through

By -


Henrietta Sees It Through: More News From the Home Front, 1942-1945, by Joyce Dennys

It's another volume of Henrietta's village life and wartime trials! I was happy to get my hands on this volume after I enjoyed Henrietta's War so much. (Once again, I was deprived of the pretty candy-like cover of the new edition.) This one did not disappoint and is even a bit longer than the first one.

The "Henrietta" letters are fictional and were written for Sketch magazine by Joyce Dennys as a humor column. The book's introduction says it nicely: "It is Joyce Dennys' great gift to have transformed the frustration and grief of those years into the most enchanting comedy." Of course not all of the weekly letters could be published in the book, so this is just a nice selection with explanatory footnotes when you've missed an event.

All the same characters are still living in the little village on the Dover coast, but now there are evacuees in homes and American soldiers stationed nearby. As the war wears on and on, everyone is tired and it's beginning to show in frayed tempers and moments of despair. But Henrietta and her friends persevere, finding bright spots in weddings and new babies and local events, and the constant hope that they will get the opportunity to tell Hitler just exactly what they think of him.

Henrietta's letter are very funny and just all-around lovely to read. I love them.

And I'm inordinately pleased with myself, because I am counting this book for the Mixing It Up Challenge in the Humor/Journalism category--and it's both!

Comments

  1. Hanna @ Booking in HeelsFebruary 26, 2012 at 4:09 AM

    I love these editions! I have Mrs 'Arris Goes To Paris and it looks absolutely lovely.

    This one's been on my wishlist for a while, but I never even thought of using it for the Mixing It Up Challenge, so I owe you one! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more