Dear Mrs Bird
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By AJ Pearce
avg rating
1 review
Richard & Judy Book Club Pick
Sunday Times Bestseller
Set during London’s blitz and filled with warmth, wit and heartbreak, Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce is a wartime story about the power of friendship, the kindness of strangers and the courage of ordinary people.
London, 1941. Amid the falling bombs Emmeline Lake dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent. Unfortunately, Emmy instead finds herself employed as a typist for the terrifying Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs Bird refuses to read, let alone answer, letters containing any form of Unpleasantness, and definitely not letters from the women the war has left lovelorn, grief-stricken or conflicted.
But the thought of these desperate women waiting for an answer becomes impossible for Emmy to ignore. She decides she simply must help and secretly starts to write back – after all, what harm could that possibly do?
‘The most uplifting, lovely book about courage, friendship, love’ – Marian Keyes
‘Utterly charming and helplessly funny’ – Jenny Colgan
‘A proper comfort read’ – India Knight
‘Imagine Bridget Jones running amok in the wartime world of Mrs Miniver’ – The Sunday Times
Reviews
We started out by discussing Mrs Bird herself and how we felt she treated her readers and in fact everyone in her life as far as we could see. She was one of those people with very little empathy which is ironic given her job. She didn't want to deal with any questions about things she felt were unpleasant, which unfortunately a lot of things are that need advice. Mrs Bird was very much from the stiff upper lip, just get on with things, many people have it much worse than you etc school of thought. We felt that she was probably doing much more harm than good a lot of the time making people feel like they shouldn't be moaning about things.
We then went on to wondering why Mrs Bird was the way she was. Had something happened to her to instil this way of thinking? Or was she simply born this way and had no experience of unpleasantness so just couldn't put herself in the shoes of her letter writers? Does she deserve some kind of sympathy even though she is such a tough character to like? We also wondered why Mrs Bird was so tough on her letter writers but then spent so much time rushing around doing good works.
When we thought about Emmy we thought of a very 21st Century girl. She seemed very forward thinking for her time in the way she was trying to deal with the problems in the letters. We all found that we were very worried about her because she seemed to be either working for the paper, volunteering with the fire service or out with her friends. We genuinely wondered when she had time to eat and sleep!
There were some historical elements we enjoyed in the book, we weren't sure about the accuracy but we enjoyed them none-the-less. For example, the descriptions of the fire station were fascinating. How it all worked and what it was described as looking like were so interesting to us as readers. We also enjoyed the descriptions of people going out and enjoying even though they weren't sure if a bomb was going to drop on them or their loved ones. This seems to alien to us but it is in fact going on in places in the world at this moment.
The reason for some of the low marks was mostly to do with the style of the book including the way things were written. It all felt quite cliché and twee which some readers didn't enjoy. There were also some words and phrases that were highlighted in the book which seemed like deliberate speedbumps when trying to read the book which some readers found annoying.
Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10, with scores spread from 2 to 9 out of 10. So this really was very much a marmite book with some people loving it and others not getting on with it at all.
