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Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (Persephone Classics)
"Boldly published, beautifully designed, dazzlingly written. . . . Profound as Katherine Mansfield, restrained as Jane Austen, sharp as Dorothy Parker."-Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, The Independent
For fifty years, Mollie Panter-Downes' name was associated with The New Yorker. She wrote a regular column ("Letter from London"), book reviews, and over thirty s
...morePaperback, 200 pages
Published
November 1st 2008
by Persephone Books
(first published September 30th 1999)
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Love this quiet book of WW2 short stories taking place in the UK. Panter-Downes writes exquisitely and descriptively, nailing a person or situation precisely and wryly. Often with unexpected humor that makes me re-read, thinking, "Did she just say that?!". Some of my favorites:
"At Gerald's club, the hall porter informed Mrs Ramsay, in discreet confidential tones which made her feel like a naughty Ouida lady visiting a man's chambers, that Mr Spalding had not yet arrived...more
"At Gerald's club, the hall porter informed Mrs Ramsay, in discreet confidential tones which made her feel like a naughty Ouida lady visiting a man's chambers, that Mr Spalding had not yet arrived...more
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These short stories first appeared in The New Yorker between 1939 and 1944. Each story is a snapshot of people (particularly women) at a defining point in their lives, viewed against the backdrop of the War, which of course affected the lives of everyone, not just those 'in action'. Each story is brief and to the point, without any kind of extraneous detail or sub-plot. There is nothing difficult about them (she eschews the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing), but taken as a whole they g...more
I loved these WWII stories by Mollie Panter-Downes who was the New Yorker's London correspondent for the duration of the war (and well beyond). There are twenty-one stories here, originally published from 1940-1944, collected for the first time in this lovely paperback edition (three cheers for Persephone).
Like Panter-Downes' journalistic work from this time, her fiction deals with the home-front. All of the stories are shaped by the war, but there is no graphic description of it. ...more
Like Panter-Downes' journalistic work from this time, her fiction deals with the home-front. All of the stories are shaped by the war, but there is no graphic description of it. ...more
I don't know how I came upon this book, but it was very sweet. It is 21 separate short stories about the lives of British citizens during WWII. And there were a lot of things I had never really thought about how normal life was affected during that time.
One story I liked was about a young woman who had married a serviceman and was pregnant, but pretty embarrassed about it since in 1940 people's attitudes about bringing a baby into London were pretty definite: it's not a good idea. Bu...more
One story I liked was about a young woman who had married a serviceman and was pregnant, but pretty embarrassed about it since in 1940 people's attitudes about bringing a baby into London were pretty definite: it's not a good idea. Bu...more
I can't always say that I enjoy short stories, it is a genre I always want to love, but sometimes struggle with. These wonderfully English, often slightly mocking short stories - and many are very short - are perfect for dipping in and out of. Written with brillaint insight into how people behave, how they think, their secrets, fears and motivations, there is a great deal of honesty and wry observation contained in them. The title story - about a mistress as she waits to hear from her lover, alo...more
I bought this book because I loved the packaging - a small square paperback with cover flaps showing a detail of the painting A Queue at the Fish Shop (Persephone Publishing knows how to make an attractive little book!). It was the perfect picture to use for a book of tiny slices of life in England during war time. These stories are truly gems. While I always knew that women and children evacuated London for the country during the bombings I haven't read that much about what every day life mu...more
1. Date with Romance - This was a rather anti-climatic start to the collection, I can't say it particularly interested me. It seems rather different in tone from any of the other stories I've read so far. 6/10
2. Meeting at the Pringles' - All the politeness and organisation that you'd expect from a story about women working together for the war effort. What makes this story stand out so much is the line towards the end of the story in which the author describes the characters as bein...more
2. Meeting at the Pringles' - All the politeness and organisation that you'd expect from a story about women working together for the war effort. What makes this story stand out so much is the line towards the end of the story in which the author describes the characters as bein...more
The short story may be the perfect form for shining a light on petty human unpleasantness. Panter-Downes wrote very good short stories. So, no, I don't like them, but I recognise their authenticity, and skill. They describe the mundane lives of civilians in England during the second world war. This isn't Mrs Miniver; nobody's even quietly heroic. They're all just getting by as best they can. The title story is particularly poignant.
Here's the end of The Waste of it All
Here's the end of The Waste of it All
Som...more
This is the first book I've ordered from Persephone books in London (http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/index.a...)and it won't be the last. They reprint "neglected classics" by 20th century women (and a few men)like this one by Mollie Panter-Downs who was the New Yorker's London correspondent during the war. Her "Letters from London" were published from 1939 - 1945. The New Yorker also published a series of 21 short stories which were also written during the war years. This...more
This volume of short stories is a gem of vignettes of everyday life in England for women during WWII. The women's Red Cross sewing circle with its talk of Greeks and pyjamas, the unmarried lady suffering from loneliness following the unusual camaraderie of her apartment bloc spending nights in the halls during the Blitz, the wife stoically preparing for her husband to go off to war, and the dealing with evacuees and billets and rations changes is social class are brilliantly conveyed. It was an ...more
Good Evening, Mrs. Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes. This book is a collection of short stories written by MPD in England during WWII and published in the New Yorker magazine from 1939 to 1945. While the setting for the stories is quite dated, the characters are not. In fact, you probably knows some of them (or their counterparts) today. There’s Mrs. Ramsay who meets an old beau for lunch and determines that she made the better choice with Mr. Ramsay. But then there is Mrs. Craven who wonders...more
Thanks to Laura M. for lending me this delightful book. A collection of short stories written by Mollie Panter-Downes for the New Yorker during World War II, examining the British domestic side of the war. Full of rich characters. Some of the stories made me laugh, some touched a nerve, but every one was a delight.
The preface by Gregory LeStage is a bit dry. I've always thought that if I ever wrote a book, and some scholar wrote a preface 50 years later, I'd be surprised to learn ...more
The preface by Gregory LeStage is a bit dry. I've always thought that if I ever wrote a book, and some scholar wrote a preface 50 years later, I'd be surprised to learn ...more
In this elegantly written series of 24 short stories, Mollie Panter-Downes paints a picture of England during World War II.
This is not the story of the war in Europe, but of the English people as they learn to cope with shortages, loss and daily life in a time of war. The tea parties still go on as do the quilting groups as people try to maintain their normal lives. Even the propriety of manners, grace and hospitality are preserved in the face of the German blitz and even though the En...more
This is not the story of the war in Europe, but of the English people as they learn to cope with shortages, loss and daily life in a time of war. The tea parties still go on as do the quilting groups as people try to maintain their normal lives. Even the propriety of manners, grace and hospitality are preserved in the face of the German blitz and even though the En...more
One good thing about Connie Willis' disappointing Blackout/All Clear duology: it made me want to read more about the World War II home front. Good Evening, Mrs. Craven is an incredible discovery: written during the war, these short stories convey the ordinary heroism, uncertainty, and tumultuous passions behind the stiff-upper-lip Britishness that the best parts of Willis' novel capture. But, allow me to emphasize, Panter-Downes' stories were written during the war. She was a correspondent for T...more
I have a complicated relationship with short stories, mostly because I'm the kind of reader who prefers a continuous narrative, where I get to know characters and stick with them over a few hundred pages. Sometimes short stories leave me wanting more, even when they're perfect little gems and just as long as they needed to be. For whatever reason, I didn't feel like anything was missing here.
The stories felt like snap-shots in the best way, and perhaps I was also pleasantly distr...more
The stories felt like snap-shots in the best way, and perhaps I was also pleasantly distr...more
A collection of stories about civilian life in wartime (WWII) London, originally published in The New Yorker. From Amazon.com: Mollie Panter-Downes writes about those coping on the periphery of the war who attend sewing parties, host evacuees sent to the country, and obsess over food and rationing. She captures the quiet moments of fear and courage. Here we find “the mistress, unlike the wife, who has to worry and mourn in secret for her man” and a “middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again...more
It's clear that I give 5 stars far too often, but since goodreads doesn't let me give any "in-betweens", I'm hitting the '5' button again. At the very least it's an indication of the great satisfaction - JOY - of books that are as good or better than expected, and how often I've lucked out in finding them...
Again, kudos to Persephone Books for resurrecting such wonderful writing - often their books are formerly out-of-print novels, but in the case of Good Evening, Mrs. Crav...more
Again, kudos to Persephone Books for resurrecting such wonderful writing - often their books are formerly out-of-print novels, but in the case of Good Evening, Mrs. Crav...more
Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for the New Yorker and this collection from Persephone Books brings together a number of her contributions to the magazine which were written during World War II. The book opens with her Letter from London dated 3 September 1939 and ends with another dated 11 June 1944. Between the two letters are twenty-one short stories, each of which offers an insight into the hopes and fears of British people trying to deal with the changes the war has brough...more
I finally got round to finishing this book that has been hogging my ‘currently reading’ status for some time…. almost 2 years in fact! It’s not that it’s a huge book, it’s only 200 pages or so, containing 21 short stories. But that was my problem, I’ve never been good with short stories, I never know whether to read them all in one go (but I get frustrated with the start stop nature of the genre) or dip into them every so often between longer books, but that also feels slightly unsatisfying as y...more
I wanted so much to like this book more, but the stories each had unique character names that it was hard to remember and differentiate one from the other by the time you read over 10 of them. They all started to blur together. I appreciated the author's brilliant eye for capturing the pre-war and wartime period in England's small towns and villages, and the witty dialogues.
Oh so British and oh so good. In this short story collection written during WWII for The New Yorker, Panter-Downes conveys more emotional undercurrent, irony and keen observation in five pages (the average length of each of submission) than most contemporary 400-page novels. The stories portray snippets of life in England amid air raids, sewing circles for the Red Cross, chocolate rationing, and billeting of lower class London evacuees with the "to the manor born" servant and land rich...more
This collection of short stories set in WWII Britain is a great read. The subjects vary quite a bit within the framework of "life on the home front during the war," and each story is well written. Some are funny, some are sad, some are unexpected, all are enjoyable. Highly recommended if this is a subject that interests you at all.
Delightful collection of short stories, very New Yorker, very English, but sings with Mollie Panter-Downes' uniquely clever and gentle voice. All are charged with wry humor and an undercurrent of loneliness, populated by characters on the home front and their various ways of dealing with war, connecting with others in uncertain circumstances, and simply, as one must, getting on with life.
Fabulous collection of short stories by a former New Yorker magazine journalist from England. Unique picture of the British homefront during WWII primarily from the upper middle class female point of view. Recommended for those wanting to know what it might have felt like to be a woman in England at that time in history.
I love it when the library has a Persephone book. Excellent stories showing life on the English home front during WWII. I'm more of a novel person than a short story person, which explains the three stars.
Marilyn Knox
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone
Shelves:
light-fiction
Short stories which capture the spirit of Britain during World War II. Well written, the characters are rock solid believable. I read this book by chance and am very impressed with it.
I especially liked "Lunch with Mr. Biddle," "Fin de Siecle," "Good Evening, Mrs. Craven," "The Waste of it All," and "Letter from London 11 June 1944."
This is a wonderful collection of stories that appeared in The New Yorker during the Second World War. My complete review is at http://colreads.blogspot.com/2011/02/boo...
I just started this one, and it is an absolutely beautiful book. The cover feels delightful to the touch, and the size is perfect for the hands. I also love the cover flaps which can act as auto-bookmarks.
eta - I absolutely loved this and wished it had been stories longer. I may have to go buy my own copy when next in London.
eta - I absolutely loved this and wished it had been stories longer. I may have to go buy my own copy when next in London.
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