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Peace, Perfect Peace
Instinctively Frances fumbled in her handbag for a torch before she faced the lights and the certainty of the lifted black-out. For some time now she had taken streetlighting for granted, but in her present sense of withdrawal she had forgotten.
Set just after World War II, Peace, Perfect Peace is a poignant and humorous tale about women readjusting and rebuilding their lives after the upheavals of war. Frances Smallwood has returned from service in the A.T.S. and is staying with her mother-in-law Joanna, who has cared for her two children during the war. Tensions grow, however, as Frances comes to believe Joanna is undermining her relationship with her children for her own selfish reasons. Clare, a young novelist friend of Joanna’s, is also pulled into the conflict as she deals with her own writer’s block and romantic difficulties.
Packed with fascinating details about life in the months just after the war’s end—rationing, barbed wire entanglements on the beach, and the omnipresence of dust from bombed out buildings (not to mention the difficulties of buying a dress)—Kamm’s novel also serves up complex, multi-dimensional characters who might be our own friends and neighbours.
‘The sort of novelist who makes you feel you’ve known her characters all your life. . . . swift, amusing and natural’ Daily Telegraph
‘The champion debunker of our time . . . an extremely capable and often amusing writer’ Daily Mail
‘Possesses a sense of humour that would give zest to the dullest occupation. Most entertaining and entirely human’ Woman’s Journal
‘Mrs. Kamm’s chief gift is a quick eye for the little surface peculiarities, follies, selfishnesses of the people she meets’ Evening Standard
Set just after World War II, Peace, Perfect Peace is a poignant and humorous tale about women readjusting and rebuilding their lives after the upheavals of war. Frances Smallwood has returned from service in the A.T.S. and is staying with her mother-in-law Joanna, who has cared for her two children during the war. Tensions grow, however, as Frances comes to believe Joanna is undermining her relationship with her children for her own selfish reasons. Clare, a young novelist friend of Joanna’s, is also pulled into the conflict as she deals with her own writer’s block and romantic difficulties.
Packed with fascinating details about life in the months just after the war’s end—rationing, barbed wire entanglements on the beach, and the omnipresence of dust from bombed out buildings (not to mention the difficulties of buying a dress)—Kamm’s novel also serves up complex, multi-dimensional characters who might be our own friends and neighbours.
‘The sort of novelist who makes you feel you’ve known her characters all your life. . . . swift, amusing and natural’ Daily Telegraph
‘The champion debunker of our time . . . an extremely capable and often amusing writer’ Daily Mail
‘Possesses a sense of humour that would give zest to the dullest occupation. Most entertaining and entirely human’ Woman’s Journal
‘Mrs. Kamm’s chief gift is a quick eye for the little surface peculiarities, follies, selfishnesses of the people she meets’ Evening Standard
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1947
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86 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 28, 2025
3 Stars
November 21, 2021
3.5
The story is set just after the end of WW2, and life is just beginning to get back to normal. Clare has gone to stay with her friend Joanna at the seaside, where she gets pulled in to the situation that is emerging between Joanna and her daughter-in-law, Frances. Frances' children have been staying with Joanna, while she and her husband have been away doing war work; now Frances is there to take the children back, but Joanna is reluctant to part with them.
The immediate aftermath of the war comes across as a time of huge upheaval for these women, almost as much as the war itself.
The story is set just after the end of WW2, and life is just beginning to get back to normal. Clare has gone to stay with her friend Joanna at the seaside, where she gets pulled in to the situation that is emerging between Joanna and her daughter-in-law, Frances. Frances' children have been staying with Joanna, while she and her husband have been away doing war work; now Frances is there to take the children back, but Joanna is reluctant to part with them.
The immediate aftermath of the war comes across as a time of huge upheaval for these women, almost as much as the war itself.
September 15, 2021
Set just after the end of WW2, this is the story of three women, Clare, a single woman living in London, her friend Joanna, and Joanna’s daughter in law, Frances. Clare, who is struggling to write a second novel after having some success with her first, goes to stay with Joanna in the seaside town where they met when Clare was working there. Joanna has been looking after her grandchildren while Frances is in the A.T.S., but now her son Tim is coming home and Frances and the children are to return to London to live with him. Tensions arise because Joanna does not want them to go. Clare is caught between Joanna and Frances and their struggle over the children. This is a mildly interesting story with some good descriptions of postwar conditions, the dreariness of rationing and food shortages, difficulties of finding a flat etc. But I didn’t care particularly for any of the characters, and while I would have liked something interesting to happen to Clare, nothing did.
November 17, 2019
A very enjoyable comfort read - well-drawn characters, great sense of time and place and an interesting plot. Written in 1947 and set in England - a very different country and situation from that experienced by today's reader.
September 8, 2025
My Interest
I love Dean Street Press and their Furrowed Middlebrow books! This one caught my eye because it was about life in the UK immediately after World War II. While I am an American, and know that my own Grandfather came home from the war, slept for a day and then went down to his old trucking company and started work again, I don’t know much more than that. Books about this time in any of the countries involved interest me.
The Story
Frances, just back from serving in the A.T.S. [like her future Queen] is visiting at her mother-in-law, Joanna’s, home where her children have stayed during her war service. Her husband is due to be “demobbed” aka released from the army soon. While her children have thrived with their grandmother, and she is sincerely grateful to her mother-in-law, Frances knows she must make a home for them again and re-form the family upon her husband’s return.
Unfortunately, her son is not interested in leaving his grandmother’s home in the country to go back to London with his mother. He is cold and distant to his mother, but attentive to his grandmother. Happily, his sistser is younger and is glad to have her mother back.
Meanwhile, we also learn about a family friend, Clare, [SPOILER] and her life which includes a long-term affair with a married man. Her insights are useful as she is friends with the grandmother and can see what’s what.
Late in the story both the grandfather and the father return–grandfather from government work, and father, of course, from fighting.
My Thoughts
I could well imagine that many families–either like this one with both parents away serving in the War or the familes whose children had to be sent away to live with starngers in the country, endured these types of adjustments. Add in the often fraught in-law relations and you have the setting for a good story.
I liked this book very much. I liked seeing how Frances’ gratitude and mistrust both existed. Her desire not to hurt her children or her mother-in-law and her desire to “re-build” her own little family of two children, herself, and her husband was perfectly normal. The grandmother’s feelings, too, were normal. That’s what made the story so interesting.
Another 4 star Furrowned Middlebrow!
Peace, Perfect Peace by Josephine Kamm This link is to the UK publisher which lists purchasing options for both the UK and the USA.
I read this book on my Kindle.
I love Dean Street Press and their Furrowed Middlebrow books! This one caught my eye because it was about life in the UK immediately after World War II. While I am an American, and know that my own Grandfather came home from the war, slept for a day and then went down to his old trucking company and started work again, I don’t know much more than that. Books about this time in any of the countries involved interest me.
The Story
Frances, just back from serving in the A.T.S. [like her future Queen] is visiting at her mother-in-law, Joanna’s, home where her children have stayed during her war service. Her husband is due to be “demobbed” aka released from the army soon. While her children have thrived with their grandmother, and she is sincerely grateful to her mother-in-law, Frances knows she must make a home for them again and re-form the family upon her husband’s return.
Unfortunately, her son is not interested in leaving his grandmother’s home in the country to go back to London with his mother. He is cold and distant to his mother, but attentive to his grandmother. Happily, his sistser is younger and is glad to have her mother back.
Meanwhile, we also learn about a family friend, Clare, [SPOILER] and her life which includes a long-term affair with a married man. Her insights are useful as she is friends with the grandmother and can see what’s what.
Late in the story both the grandfather and the father return–grandfather from government work, and father, of course, from fighting.
My Thoughts
I could well imagine that many families–either like this one with both parents away serving in the War or the familes whose children had to be sent away to live with starngers in the country, endured these types of adjustments. Add in the often fraught in-law relations and you have the setting for a good story.
I liked this book very much. I liked seeing how Frances’ gratitude and mistrust both existed. Her desire not to hurt her children or her mother-in-law and her desire to “re-build” her own little family of two children, herself, and her husband was perfectly normal. The grandmother’s feelings, too, were normal. That’s what made the story so interesting.
Another 4 star Furrowned Middlebrow!
Peace, Perfect Peace by Josephine Kamm This link is to the UK publisher which lists purchasing options for both the UK and the USA.
I read this book on my Kindle.
March 11, 2023
Too bad that Josephine Kamm's other novels are not available via the Kindle. "Peace, Perfect Peace" was written after WW II and the author lived during the War in London having to deal with life afterwards. Clare Ellis has decided to go to the country to stay with a friend and hopefully will bring a spark ideas for her book. During the War the ending seemed to signal a way back to the life before but still the lack of everything remained and also adding a diminished camaraderie amongst the population. Kamm's novel is a story where postwar is the lesser theme, the relationships and personalities is the driving focus. The story starts by focusing on one character and then shifting to others, at the conclusion perceptions are made clear.
Story in short- The War is over but certain problems remain and some new ones surface for Clare and her friends.
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Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6
Set just after World War II, Peace, Perfect Peace is a poignant and humorous tale about women readjusting and rebuilding their lives after the upheavals of war.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 7
Frances Smallwood has returned from service in the A.T.S. and is staying with her mother-in-law Joanna, who has cared for her two children during the war. Tensions grow, however, as Frances comes to believe Joanna is undermining her relationship with her children for her own selfish reasons. Clare, a young
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 9
novelist friend of Joanna’s, is also pulled into the conflict as she deals with her own writer’s block and romantic difficulties. Packed with fascinating details about life in the months just after the war’s end—rationing, barbed wire entanglements on the beach, and the omnipresence of dust from bombed out buildings (not to mention the difficulties of buying a dress)—Kamm’s novel also serves up complex, multi-dimensional characters who might be our own friends and neighbours.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 41
Speaking of her schooldays, Josephine Kamm said that although she experienced no overt anti-semitism, she was discomfited by the awareness that as a Jewish pupil she was culturally different from her schoolmates.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
It took me awhile to warm up to Clare, though she was not my favorite character. I found the affair with Matthew troubling and downright sinful. First why should she want a lover that seems to not give her the love she needs and someone she will not be able to marry? Charles had met Matthew's wife and found her quite different than what Clare imagined. Charles wanted to marry her but Clare told him being eight years older and not being in love was not a good start, besides she loves Matthew. What I ended up liking about Clare was her sense of fairness she showed Frances by telling her what Joanna did to cause trouble between Frances' son, Giles; Joanna, Giles' grandmother wanted him for herself and to become part of herself. At first I thought Frances was unfair but as the story progressed, my perception changed with regard to Joanna too. I was happy that in the end Giles and Tim went back to London. I was also happy that Clare no longer loved Matthew and knowing Charles would marry someone else, it seems likely, though that is still left in the air. Clare may find love there or with someone else, I think she will find it unexpectedly and she will finally be able to have a married life and not remain single. I liked that Monica, Joanna's son, Phillip's wife was not perfect but she was not taken in by Joanna's ways. Clare will finally write her book, I am sure when she starts to lean away from it.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 5
How many times had Matthew sat there as near to the fire as he could get, and would he sit there again? Did she really want him back or would the absence of his alternating moods of demand and neglect be a relief and not a pain? She shrugged her shoulders and thought how ridiculous
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 5
it was that at thirty-five she was so clever and reasonable at handling other people’s love-affairs but so childish and stupid over her own. Anyhow, if Matthew wanted to come back he would come in his own good time, and if she wanted—or felt strong enough—to turn him away she was free to do so. This sort of situation had happened before and would happen again, many times as far as she could see. It would be useless to try and force the issue and worse than useless to agonize over something which she could not control. And yet, useless though it was, she knew that sooner or later she would try and force the issue. Meanwhile, there was so much to do. Wrenching her thoughts away from the mundane strain of loving a married man, she put down her coffee-cup and opened the bureau.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
A timely attack of measles had produced a doctor’s certificate to the effect that Miss Ellis was no longer fit to undertake a full-time job and so she applied for, and gained, her release. On her last afternoon a farewell office party was given for her and as no one could provide anything stronger, they drank tea.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
“Writing’s much more paying at the moment than being a temporary Civil Servant,” Clare told him. “With any luck I shall earn a year’s salary in three months, with none of the effort of having to come into the office every day.” The director merely shook his head and said, “I take a poor view of the situation,” but her friends were impressed and some of them were frankly envious, for at that time no one had expected
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
the war to end so soon and the department to be closed down. “Pity us,” said one, “when you’re back in London in your own comfortable flat, turning out a couple of thousand pungent words in the morning and amusing yourself for the rest of the day.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 8
She had had no house-hunting to do, for the friend who had taken her Bloomsbury flat when the department left London after the blitz obligingly relinquished it without question or fuss. She had enough money in the bank to keep her for at least a year. And finally, Mrs. Sutcliffe, who did for all the tenants in the house, came twice a week to clean her rooms.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 8
Her mind edged fretfully around a number of possible settings. Wartime London had already been done to death. Resistance to Fascism novels were being published every day and to add another would be pointless, even if her imagination could supply the background which she lacked. To set the story in the sea-side town she knew so well would be fatal, for inevitably real incidents would creep in and her friends would accuse her, rightly or wrongly, of putting them in a book.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 12
After three years of this uneasy existence Clare had been rescued by Joanna Smallwood. Joanna was fifty-five, her three sons were away and her husband had a wartime job in the War Office.
Story in short- The War is over but certain problems remain and some new ones surface for Clare and her friends.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6
Set just after World War II, Peace, Perfect Peace is a poignant and humorous tale about women readjusting and rebuilding their lives after the upheavals of war.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 7
Frances Smallwood has returned from service in the A.T.S. and is staying with her mother-in-law Joanna, who has cared for her two children during the war. Tensions grow, however, as Frances comes to believe Joanna is undermining her relationship with her children for her own selfish reasons. Clare, a young
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 9
novelist friend of Joanna’s, is also pulled into the conflict as she deals with her own writer’s block and romantic difficulties. Packed with fascinating details about life in the months just after the war’s end—rationing, barbed wire entanglements on the beach, and the omnipresence of dust from bombed out buildings (not to mention the difficulties of buying a dress)—Kamm’s novel also serves up complex, multi-dimensional characters who might be our own friends and neighbours.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 41
Speaking of her schooldays, Josephine Kamm said that although she experienced no overt anti-semitism, she was discomfited by the awareness that as a Jewish pupil she was culturally different from her schoolmates.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
It took me awhile to warm up to Clare, though she was not my favorite character. I found the affair with Matthew troubling and downright sinful. First why should she want a lover that seems to not give her the love she needs and someone she will not be able to marry? Charles had met Matthew's wife and found her quite different than what Clare imagined. Charles wanted to marry her but Clare told him being eight years older and not being in love was not a good start, besides she loves Matthew. What I ended up liking about Clare was her sense of fairness she showed Frances by telling her what Joanna did to cause trouble between Frances' son, Giles; Joanna, Giles' grandmother wanted him for herself and to become part of herself. At first I thought Frances was unfair but as the story progressed, my perception changed with regard to Joanna too. I was happy that in the end Giles and Tim went back to London. I was also happy that Clare no longer loved Matthew and knowing Charles would marry someone else, it seems likely, though that is still left in the air. Clare may find love there or with someone else, I think she will find it unexpectedly and she will finally be able to have a married life and not remain single. I liked that Monica, Joanna's son, Phillip's wife was not perfect but she was not taken in by Joanna's ways. Clare will finally write her book, I am sure when she starts to lean away from it.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 5
How many times had Matthew sat there as near to the fire as he could get, and would he sit there again? Did she really want him back or would the absence of his alternating moods of demand and neglect be a relief and not a pain? She shrugged her shoulders and thought how ridiculous
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 5
it was that at thirty-five she was so clever and reasonable at handling other people’s love-affairs but so childish and stupid over her own. Anyhow, if Matthew wanted to come back he would come in his own good time, and if she wanted—or felt strong enough—to turn him away she was free to do so. This sort of situation had happened before and would happen again, many times as far as she could see. It would be useless to try and force the issue and worse than useless to agonize over something which she could not control. And yet, useless though it was, she knew that sooner or later she would try and force the issue. Meanwhile, there was so much to do. Wrenching her thoughts away from the mundane strain of loving a married man, she put down her coffee-cup and opened the bureau.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
A timely attack of measles had produced a doctor’s certificate to the effect that Miss Ellis was no longer fit to undertake a full-time job and so she applied for, and gained, her release. On her last afternoon a farewell office party was given for her and as no one could provide anything stronger, they drank tea.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
“Writing’s much more paying at the moment than being a temporary Civil Servant,” Clare told him. “With any luck I shall earn a year’s salary in three months, with none of the effort of having to come into the office every day.” The director merely shook his head and said, “I take a poor view of the situation,” but her friends were impressed and some of them were frankly envious, for at that time no one had expected
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 7
the war to end so soon and the department to be closed down. “Pity us,” said one, “when you’re back in London in your own comfortable flat, turning out a couple of thousand pungent words in the morning and amusing yourself for the rest of the day.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 8
She had had no house-hunting to do, for the friend who had taken her Bloomsbury flat when the department left London after the blitz obligingly relinquished it without question or fuss. She had enough money in the bank to keep her for at least a year. And finally, Mrs. Sutcliffe, who did for all the tenants in the house, came twice a week to clean her rooms.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 8
Her mind edged fretfully around a number of possible settings. Wartime London had already been done to death. Resistance to Fascism novels were being published every day and to add another would be pointless, even if her imagination could supply the background which she lacked. To set the story in the sea-side town she knew so well would be fatal, for inevitably real incidents would creep in and her friends would accuse her, rightly or wrongly, of putting them in a book.
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 12
After three years of this uneasy existence Clare had been rescued by Joanna Smallwood. Joanna was fifty-five, her three sons were away and her husband had a wartime job in the War Office.
April 21, 2025
I didn't particularly like the main characters at first, but both Clare and Frances grew on me, Clare because she started being honest with herself, and Frances because of the way my perception of her changed as the story unfolded. Joanna is horrifying, but I found her very realistic. I also found all of the details of post-WWII life in the UK interesting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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