"What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?"
"Don't tell me anymore...I'm hooked already."
-from a conversation at the beginning of the book
I cannot say I loved The Postmistress but I did stick with it to the end so it must have had something going for it. I cared enough to want to know how it all turned out. I'm rating it a 2+.
The story is set in the early 1940's just before the U.S. becomes directly involved in WWII. Iris is the postmistress in Franklin, Massachusetts, and though she is the title character she seems to take a secondary role to Frankie, a news journalist and radio broadcaster in London. Both women, in their own roles, are charged with delivering the news but each one finds reason to withhold a portion. I found Frankie's story more compelling as she had to deal with the experience of what was really going on in Europe and how to inform the American public, most of whom were in serious denial.
I found Ms. Blake's writing style to be a bit tedious at times and poetic at others. When I learned she had a Phd. in Victorian literature, that made a lot of sense. I especially liked this simile "...she imagined she could pull Time like taffy, stretching it longer and longer between her hands until the finest point had been reached..."
The book does address the theme of war and its impact in a very interesting way, even without the blood and gore.
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