June 23, 2011: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Discussion:

The reaction to this month’s Page Turners selection, Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress, was a bit divided. Of the twelve members attending, exactly half gave it a thumbs up vote, while the other six voted thumbs sideways.

The major complaints concerned the book’s dialogue and tone. The readers thought that the dialogues were too lengthy and the conversations a bit unrealistic. They also had difficulty distinguishing between the characters’ points of view in the alternating vignettes. They would have to read for a bit before they could ascertain from which of the three protagonists’ viewpoints the story was being told.

We then began to discuss each of the three women in more depth. Emma, the doctor’s wife, inspired a lot of sympathy. With her orphan background and lack of self-esteem, it seemed unfair that she lost her husband as well. His death seemed to reinforce her belief that she was completely alone in the world. One Page Turner called Dr. Finch a wimp; while another felt he was living his father’s failures. We speculated on possible suitors for Emma. One group member thought she might be a match for the widower Fish though others thought Otto the house painter might be a contender. However, we managed to talk each other out of any romantic entanglements for Emma.

One Page Turner commented on the speed of romance depicted in the novel. At times, it seemed really fast and at others very slow. The romance of Iris, the postmistress, and Harry Vale exemplified both speeds very well. In the beginning, it seemed to really take off, but later the couple seemed a bit embarrassed to be seen holding hands by the townsfolk. We found Harry’s death at the end of the novel very surprising and a bit sad due to his relationship with Iris. We also discussed Iris’s title of postmaster, as opposed to postmistress. We found it strange that the book was titled The Postmistress if that is an inaccurate term.

The title also seemed strange since we viewed Frankie, not Iris, as the main protagonist. We discussed Frankie’s privileged upbringing and her radio career; in addition to the experiences she had interviewing people on the trains. We felt that prior to these experiences she was a bit naïve and did not follow all of her stories to the end, as illustrated by Emma and Will Finch wanting to know what happened to her neighbor Billy after a bombing. After her experiences on the trains, Frankie seemed shell-shocked, as if she was used to reporting the news but not to being so intimately involved in it. We also saw a few parallels between her and Dr. Finch. Both seemed to be trying to prove or earn something; the doctor was attempting to regain confidence in his medical skills, and Frankie was trying to make it as a female journalist. They both seemed to feel better when they were contributing to the war effort too. Harry Vale seemed to share this quality as well.

As the meeting wound down, we discussed one of the major themes of the book. Blake wrote in the afterward that the fundamental question the book strove to answer was about how people bear the news. Each of the three women in the story did this in different ways. Iris and Frankie both delivered the news; Iris served as a temporary repository of the news in letters, and Frankie experienced, and then reported the news. Regarding the letters Iris and Frankie possessed relating to Dr. Finch’s death, they each had to decide how to bear the news physically, while Emma had to bear the news they delivered emotionally.

We also questioned whether Iris and Frankie were right to withhold the letters from Emma. The consensus seemed to be that the group felt it was appropriate for Iris to withhold the letter until she knew Dr. Finch was officially deceased. However, several of the readers thought the decision to withhold the other letter was not Frankie’s to make, even if she did it out of compassion or emotional inability.

Before the meeting ended, we mentioned a few titles we might want to include on next year’s reading list. Group members are encouraged to bring suggestions next month as well, before the voting commences in August. Next month we will meet on July 28 to discuss Stieg Larsson’s second book in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire. I anticipate a fiery discussion.