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The British Mollie Panter-Downes wrote for The New Yorker for over 50 years, everything from the regular column Letters from London, stories set contemporaneously during WWII, poems, and longer articles. Thanks to Persephone Classics, we have for the first time a collection of those wartime short stories bookended by the first wartime Letter from London and the last. They are simply marvelous! Her voice is witty, often humorous, but doesn't skimp on the darker more emotional and tragic aspects. You are placed right in the moment in each one. Some have you revisiting the same characters. Some are set in London and others are in the countryside. The end result is a protrait of the English homefront at wartime, from those left behind.

This edition also has a forward and afterward that are fascinating, full of details about the author's writing - she saw herself as a journalist, not a writer of fiction and after WWII only wrote a few more short stories though she did write a few novels which I will definitely try to locate. Because she considered herself a journalist, she never promoted her fiction writing and it took 50 years before her short stories were collected together and published by the marvelous Persephone Classics into a beautiful paperback. Why she disdained her own fiction writing in favor of her journalistic writing (which is also superb) is a puzzle -- because these are gems - all 21 of them.

BWF - letter G - no tag