Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

by Mollie Panter-Downes

Until now, Mollie Panter-Downes's stories, originally published in The New Yorker, have been unavailable in English. They explore most aspects of British life during WWII in great detail. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1906462011
• ISBN13: 9781906462017
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Persephone Books
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

A Journalist's WWII Short Stories

Carefully limned stories about life for women on the homefront in England during WWII. With great economy, the stories describe the changes and challenges faced--living with evacuees, coping with the lack of menfolk, dealing with shortages of food and just about everything else, the comraderie of the Blitz, and economic and social dislocations. Journalist Mollie Panter-Downes skillfully portrays in fiction what she herself experienced and wrote about in her Letters From London in The New Yorker.

Excellent collections of short stories.

This is an excellent book of short stories describing the time of World War II in England. Most stories take place outside of London where people have fled or been evacuated during the bombings.

Experiencing WW II as a British civilian

These short stories--three to ten pages or so each--let us experience World War II from the standpoint of Britons in England. We meet a few soldiers, but most of the characters are women, trying to create lives and and families in wartime. Some of the stories reflect Panter-Downes upper class upbringing.--country ladies inviting London children into their houses or chatting with each other as they sew bandages--but others take let us see the anguish in the soul of ordinary Britons, like a woman trying to say good bye to her husband at the end of a week-long leave. This book is part of a series being published "for women" but I'm a guy, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

A gem

What a delightful surprise these little stories were- so witty and wise and utterly readable. A true treat.