Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce

Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I mentioned that I was reading this online, I got nothing but positive responses. And they were not wrong: Dear Mrs Bird is charming and lovely and deeply, utterly refreshing. It’s funny and heartbreaking and very, very funny. Pearce has a delightful eye for character and gives you some very human and very real people dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

In terms of plot, it’s fairly straightforward. Emmy gets a job working on a magazine and, rather than being the war correspondent in training, she is to type up the replies of Mrs Bird. Mrs Bird is the magazine’s agony aunt and redoubtable and very particular in the letters that she answers (she is brilliant, I love her). So Emmy suddenly decides to step into the breach. She will answer the Unpleasant Letters in the style of Mrs Bird, sign her name, and sneak them into the magazine. Things happen, as they inevitably do, and some of them will break your heart a little bit.

I’ve always enjoyed work set in and around this period and particular work that deals with the experience of the everyday woman. I’m also somebody who has spent many happy days in the archives combing through the letters pages of vintage magazines. I love them greatly because they tell you everything about the experience of existing at that point in time. It’s not about glamour, it’s about trying to live a life despite everything that life may be throwing at you at this point. Dear Mrs Bird clearly loves its source material and period very much and I really appreciated that. It’s all very genuine and intensely charming stuff.

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