- Complete discussion of TP
- DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- TP ~ first set of DQs
- TP ~ second set of DQs
- Read the first chapter
- The author's web site
chose not to deliver the mail?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Postmistress ~ book for September
Our book for September is The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, published in 2010. In this YouTube video the author gives us the story behind The Postmistress. I enjoyed the many pictures and headlines from that era shown here.
chose not to deliver the mail?
chose not to deliver the mail?
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6 comments:
I hope some of you book buddies have already started our book for September. I've posted links so you can check out the author's web site and read the first chapter of The Postmistress online.
Thanks for sharing the video clip. I had visualized the author as being older.
I've started the book and am finding it enjoyable. It's not a cliff hanger, but the characters are well developed and the plot is intriguing. WWII books have always been of interest to me possibly since my dad was in the army serving in England during WWII. However, he never talked about it which was apparently common.
The video interview with the author, Sarah Blake, is very good. The opening music is haunting, and one of the opening quotes explains my thoughts on the book very well: "seemingly random nature of love and war and story itself" - (Andre Dubus III).
My ears perked up on the word 'patchwork' - talking about Frankie wanting to be sent into Europe "so that she can take down the stories because she wants to put the patchwork quilt together and show America that in fact there is something going on."
Susan, the word "patchwork" made me think of you, so I'm not surprised it caught your attention. For those of you who don't yet know, Susan's blog is "Patchwork Reflections." Look at her profile photo (here, beside her name), and you'll see a patchwork quilt.
This morning, Susan posted photos of flowers around her house, along with her daughter's cute dog. Take a look: http://patchworkreflections.blogspot.com/2010/09/flowers-by-tasha.html
Shirley is also into quilting.
Shirley, my father was in the Philippines and Japan during World War Two, and the only stories he told were suitable for small children -- like hearing piano music while walking down a city street (I stood by his mother's elbow whenever she played the piano to watch her fingers while I listened).
My parents were in WWII also, and long after the war when I was around 4 or 5 we were stationed in Germany, I remember stories about visiting the sites of the concentration camps and all the horror that went on there. This book touches on the early days of 'rounding' up the Jews, a very sad time in our history (I believe I used that same phrase in describing the way folks were treated in The Help.)
When I was growing up (I was the second of six kids all born after my dad got home from the war in 1945), there was minimal talk of the war. One brother enjoyed wearing my Dad's non-heavy metal hat (can't think of what those were called) and there were some anti-Nazi jingles, but otherwise it wasn't talked about. And even if it would have been, I wonder if, as kids, we would have been that interested in it. When I was in fifth or sixth grade, one of the mothers of another Girl Scout who was from Germany spoke of her experiences in Germany and told of her father who had made a comment in a bar about Hitler and during the night was arrested and not released until the war ended. She was also in the Hitler youth (no choice). Her soldier brother was killed by the Americans so her family opposed her when she fell in love with an American. Before that, I knew bare facts about WWII (I also remember the horrors of the photos and stories from the concentration camps), but this talk brought the war closer and changed my outlook of war as it no longer was so black and white after realizing that the "enemy" wasn't the citizens of the country as a whole.
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