If you like historical domestic fiction, this is for you. I thought I knew a fair amount about the world wars, but never really considered just how hard the years immediately after ww1 were. So many lives were lost and those that remained had been brought to their knees by poverty and grief.
It’s in this setting, in post-war Britain, we meet 20-year-old Belinda. Having lost her fiancée at the Front, she has no man to marry and no future prospects – one of the many Surplus Girls. She’s kind, positive and hardworking and is determined to pick up the pieces and move forward in life by training as a secretary and working in an office. But she’s bound by her duty to support her fiancee’s family, her efforts of keeping her own poverty-stricken parents out of the workhouse and the gender stereotypes and social expectations of the time. As you can imagine she has no easy ride – including having to give up employment for a returning solider (as was expected). Finding work in a bookshop (nice!) she meets two men who change her life… (no spoilers)
It’s a story of loss and new beginnings, family, feminism and romance and really highlights how far women have come in the last 100 years.
Life lesson learned: Sometimes we are stronger than we believe ourselves to be.
It’s in this setting, in post-war Britain, we meet 20-year-old Belinda. Having lost her fiancée at the Front, she has no man to marry and no future prospects – one of the many Surplus Girls. She’s kind, positive and hardworking and is determined to pick up the pieces and move forward in life by training as a secretary and working in an office. But she’s bound by her duty to support her fiancee’s family, her efforts of keeping her own poverty-stricken parents out of the workhouse and the gender stereotypes and social expectations of the time. As you can imagine she has no easy ride – including having to give up employment for a returning solider (as was expected). Finding work in a bookshop (nice!) she meets two men who change her life… (no spoilers)
It’s a story of loss and new beginnings, family, feminism and romance and really highlights how far women have come in the last 100 years.
Life lesson learned: Sometimes we are stronger than we believe ourselves to be.