On the Other Side: Letters to My Children from Germany 1940-46 by Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg

If you have read Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson (published as this one is by Persephone), a telling exploration of what it was like living in London during  WW2; you could do no better than read this shorter book which tells you what it was like living in Hamburg, Germany, at the same time.  Did you know that Germans were subjected to food rationing?  At the start of the war each person could expect 60grms semolina/oats, 125 grms butter per week - and 1lb meat/sausage per month - anything else, vegetables, eggs, fruit - would be what you could lay your hands on.  by the end of the war the meat ration had shrunk to 1/2lb per month, accompanied by whatever else could be found.  Did you know that as well as the near-total distruction of Dresden by the RAF, most of Hamburg, where Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg  lived, plus many other large towns were also continually bombed until not very much remained?  For all those books (and there are many) written about life in WW2 in the UK from the point of view of housewives, soldiers, doctors, midwives, shopkeepers, children etc., there is very little available from the same point of view in Germany.  The Book Thief, a good fiction and one I recommend is one of them, but this is non fiction, and so gives you a real point of view.  From the radio messages in the early days of continued bombing telling Germany that "everything is going to be restored ever so much more beautifully than before" to the never ending tramp to the shelters every time the sirens sounded, wearing several layers of clothing in case your building was bombed plus any food you could carry for the same reason:  this was the hell that ordinary Germans too, lived with.

Tellingly, Hamburg was a town that was not supportive of Hitler and his ideas.  Towards the end of the book this mother and letter writer records her thoughts thus:  "Our beautiful and proud Germany has been crushed, ground into the earth and smashed into ruins, whilst millions sacrificed their lives and all our lovely towns and art treasures were destroyed.  And all this because of one man who had a lunatic vision of being 'chosen by God'.  May he and his followers be caught in just retribution."

"Tilli" Woldff-Monckeberg was an educated woman married to a professor of English, the stepfather of Tilli's children that were outside Germany during the war years.  She didn't write books, but every word of hers is worth reading - every word she recorded (in the form of letters to those children) were for the eyes of her children only but now they are here for us all to read, thanks to her youngest daughter, who discovered them, edited and published them in the 1970s.
  
You should look here  to read more, but don't let this little book slip under your radar.

Sleeping at the Starlite Motel - Bailey White

I don't know how I found this video of an interview with Bailey White but have a look 

When I listened to this quiet, unassuming schoolteacher from Georgia, I wondered to myself what she wrote, and what her style was?  So, as you do, I clicked on that button and bought Sleeping at the Starlite Motel.

It's not a novel, but neither is it a book of short stories, although if you treated each little tale as a short story you wouldn't go far wrong.  These little "rememberings"; are they one hundred per cent true?  or is the truth embroidered?  It really doesn't matter, because all of them reveal a Southern way of life and even though I have never been to that part of the States, if I did, I would recognise it straight away! I loved finding out that her father was a Hollywood B movie scriptwriter, and that her mother spotted her father's feet in a ghost film!  I loved her tale of sneaking out of a computer training course and going off to the dog track.  In fact, for different reasons, I loved each chapter.  It's the kind of book you might read a chapter of each night in bed whilst dropping off with a smile on your face.  There is nothing to race to the end for, there is no gasp of horror as you turn a page, but for me, it was just a lovely find.

A Virtuous Woman - Kaye Gibbons

Forget about love as in chick-lit.  Forget about happy ever after.  Here is a small book, and inside it's pages you will learn of a love that is probably like many others, but unlike anything you have known.  In alternate chapters, Ruby and Jack Stokes tell the reader how they feel about each other.  Ruby tells the reader how she met Jack, how she settled with him and what she is doing now that she has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  Jack tells you that Ruby was the love of his life - for it is clear from the first couple of paragraphs that Jack's telling starts after Ruby has died.

Hard to say where and when the book is set, but that does not really matter.  Certainly the author lives in North Carolina, and I'd say that the book was set there, sometime in the 1940s or 50s.  What is necessary is that you read this short book slowly, so that you don't miss the beauty amongst the words.  Written in the colloquial style of the place they live in, it takes a little while for the rythym to click, but when it does, you'll get it.  And the last chapter?  read that slowly, because it involves three people's thoughts and is written in a stream of conciousness style.  Unless you have a heart of stone, I defy you not to be moved by this bitter-sweet gem of a book.

NB For non US readers, towards the end of the book the word "haint" appears a couple of times.  It's a spirit, or a haunt.........

The Botticelli Angel - Harry Cauley

I borrowed this lovely read from a friend, and so glad I did.  It's set in America, in the 1920s, in the years before the Depression when John Tree, a grifter (but not a good one), a sometime teacher with a false diploma, and an eye for a pretty woman, comes across an angel.  An angel whose mother has just been waiting for another angel to take him to heaven.  John Tree can do that;  but his heaven just happens to be California.  For if he can get the angel to Hollywood, he can make a fortune.  His adventures across America, with Michael, a simple soul with small boney growths on his shoulder blades are a joy to read.  The village of Paradise, the circus folk, the visit to the Grand Canyon all hold joy for Michael, who asks, at every one of them, "is this heaven?".

Harry Cauley has a light touch writing style and a lovely sense of humour as he takes us along for the ride through all the ups and downs of the journey to California.  Told in the first person, John Tree struggles with his own morals whilst he protects Michael but only because he sees money at the end of the journey.  Funny and heartbreaking in turns, this is an odd little novel which really does deserve more readers.  Make one of them you!

The Women in Black - Madeleine St John

What a lovely little read!  Several women, from different backgrounds, with different views on life and with different hopes for their own lives..... described beautifully over a short period of time working at F G Goode's department store in Sydney, Australia in the 1950s.  And for three of them, in that short period, great changes do occur - and are hopes fulfilled?  It would only take you an afternoon to read the 141 pages and find out.
It starts rather slowly, and I found myself wondering if I was really interested enough in any of these women to bother reading on.  But so glad I did.  Her observations on the conversations of different kinds of women (men hardly get a chance to say much in this book, but as you read on you will see that it does not matter too much) is crystal clear, their hopes and dreams expressed quietly to themselves whilst having to just get on with real life and hope for the best.  For all the changes the world has seen since the 1950s, my guess is that we all know at least one of these women even now, wishing and hoping for something.  There is a delightful story running through with everyone else's stories which sees a result because of the purchase of a pretty negligee......   A quiet little charmer of a book.

Here on Earth - Alice Hoffman

March (Marcheline) Murray, and her daughter Gwen, arrive in the small Massachusetts town March grew up in for the funeral of a woman who cared for her and her father after the death of her mother.  For Gwen it is the first visit; and for March it's the first time that she's come home in nineteen years.  She married a local boy and they made their home in California.  And now March discovers that the boy she lost, the love of her life in her teens until he left town and didn't come back is home, and owning most of it.  This lost love seems stronger than her marriage, stronger than her bond with her daughter, stronger than the strings of old friendships because he wants her back and somehow it seems that he can get her.
This is the kind of love story you don't want to experience.  The dark side of a man who only wanted March, and will do anything at all to keep her this time round.  The dark side of a violent character.  How many times have you seen a woman with bruises and thought "how did that happen"?  This is the first of Alice Hoffman's books I have read, and boy, is she a wordsmith.  This one is worth reading for the pictures in those words which conjure up feelings and colours and temperatures and  everything needed to weave a heartbreaking story about the wrong kind of love, but also the way families can split and reform in different ways, and about how the conduct of one person alters the conduct of another.  Truly a book you need to read.

 

Tru and Adam's Big day!

Order of service

Just a pair of bridesmaid's footwear!

Well...... think that went off OK then?

Bridesmaids (and others) transport of delight!

and for taking the newlyweds to the reception?

What's a wee shower doing?

One of the bridesmaids!

and one of the pages

Just waiting for high tea now!

Bit of a chat at the top table......

sit in the right place, and ......

....... then it's time for tea!

in good company with the "kahlans"......

....Lisa, Sach and Nat.....

me and him!

Pretty cake, with Tru, Adam, Jethro and Dexter (just room for everyone up there!)

The Bride's bouquet

Lots of children at this wedding.... loved this "Strawberry Princess"!

and how fab is this...... shop for your own party favours!

And there wasn't a soul who didn't stop at this table!!