![]() ![]() The eponymous story is one of the most poignant in the collection. ![]() These are not tales of heroic actions and selfless dedication to the war effort. And although the stories retain an upper-middle class gentility, Panter Downes doesn’t shy away from exploring the baser side of human nature and behavior. The factual details Panter-Downes includes about wartime life certainly do provide the framework for each of these stories but they are ultimately there in service of exploring more universal truths. Panter-Downes manages to write social history in the guise of fiction but does so in a way that one never feels like one is learning a lesson. Some of that output included these 21 short stories about life in England during World War II. Mollie Panter-Downes was a correspondent for The New Yorker, writing over 852 pieces between 19. I got over my recent reading slump but I think I may have traded it for a reviewing slump. ![]() Writing a review that doesn’t bore the pants off of one’s readers sometimes feels as insurmountably arduous and impossible as writing the book itself. ![]()
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