Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War (Virago Modern Classics)

Review Written in and about the decade 1939-1949, the stories in this high caliber anthology are the work of women, chiefly English (five Americans are represented), who were actively engaged in the war effort on the home front. The experience of war--the London blitz, evacuation, the fronts in Europe and Africa--become personalized in stories from Barbara Pym, Rosamond Lehmann, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and others as notable ... the stories poignantly illuminate the ``second war'' behind the frontlines. ― Publishers WeeklyThis is as stark and acidic a collection of war stories as you will read ... Stripped bare of the sentimentalism attached to love in wartime, writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Beryl Bainbridge and Dorothy Parker provide poignant, wry, subversive tales ... Revelatory reading ― ScotsmanFascinating ... a poignant book ... an unusual and absolutely authentic view of those convulsive years ― ObserverEach voice is individual and unsentimental ... Molly Lefebure and Margery Sharp write succinctly of the Blitz, while in Miss Anstruther's Letters, Rose Macaulay brilliantly paints spiritual as well as material devastation ― Daily TelegraphEach story in Wave Me Goodbye is a relic of the Second World War ― Sunday Times Product Description This collection of wartime stories includes some of the finest writers of a generation. War had traditionally been seen as a masculine occupation, but these stories show how women were equal if different participants. Here, war is less about progress on the frontline of battle than about the daily struggle to keep homes, families and relationships alive; to snatch pleasure from danger, and strength from shared experience. The stories are about saying goodbye to husbands, lovers, brothers and sons - and sometimes years later trying to remake their lives anew. By turn comical, stoical, compassionate, angry and subversive, these intensely individual voices bring a human dimension to the momentous events that reverberated around them and each opens a window on to a hidden landscape of war.Writers include: Jean Rhys, Beryl Bainbridge, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Stevie Smith, Rosamond Lehmann, Barbara Pym, Angela Thirkell, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Dorothy Parker, Doris Lessing, Olivia Manning, Rose Macaulay and Stevie Smith Book Description Published to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, these are powerful wartime stories written by the finest women writers of that generation. From the Back Cover 'This is as stark and acidic a collection of war stories as you will read . . . writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Beryl Bainbridge and Dorothy Parker provide poignant, wry, subversive tales . . . Revelatory reading' ScotsmanThis collection of wartime stories includes some of the finest writers of a generation. War had traditionally been seen as a masculine occupation but these stories show how women were equal if different participants. Here, war is less about progress on the frontline of battle than about the daily struggle to keep homes, families and relationships alive; to snatch pleasure from danger, and strength from shared experience. By turn comical, stoical, compassionate, angry and subversive these intensely individual voices bring a human dimension to the momentous events that reverberated around them and each opens a window on to a hidden landscape of war.'Each voice is individual and unsentimental . . .Molly Lefebure and Margery Sharp write succinctly of the Blitz, while in Miss Anstruther's Letters, Rose Macaulay brilliantly paints spiritual as well as material devastation' Daily Telegraph