The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

It seems The Postmistress is being pushed as the next The Help , with no less an endorsement from Kathryn Stockett on the front cover. But while The Help followed three woman in a way that left me quite charmed and moved, the intertwining stories in The Postmistress never quite grabbed me. It's 1940, and three woman find their lives about to intersect. Radio reporter Frankie Bard is giving Americans a taste of London during the Blitz; newly married Emma is trying to find her place as a doctor's wife in a small New England town; and that town's postmistress, Iris James, finds herself yearning for town mechanic Henry. To her credit, there is a basically strong plot in Blake's novel, with twists and turns the reader won't see coming. Iris, with her sense of order and deeply rooted kindness, is the woman I most wanted to know more about. But Blake is most interested in an idea of the "edges" of a story. As Emma's husband says to Frankie, "He was just a boy in a story and we never know the ending, we never got to close the book. It makes you wonder what happens to the people in them after the story stops - all the stories you've reported, for instance. Where are they all now?" In developing this idea, I felt Blake left me with a bunch of characters I never quite understood and with fuzziness about their motivations. There are harrowing scenes of the war and of life in a small town, but at the end, when Frankie opaquely says "The story knew" I wanted to bang my head against a wall. The problem is not that few of the characters in The Postmistress get happy endings; it's that often there's a lack an instinct for self-preservation. If they're ambivalent about their fate, why should the reader care? While The Postmistress has its moments, and fans of WWII history may enjoy it, those looking for an unconventional war story may be more satisfied by The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society .