A bit too good to be true. Less interesting once she starts having sex, unfortunately.

I've always thought that if I were say, 17, and keeping a journal during apocalyptic times, it would probably have lengthy passages that bemoaned the fact that I got my period TWO DAYS EARLY and stained my best white jeans and oh, by the way, NYC was wiped off the map today. Well, Joan Wyndham really did keep that journal, bless her. Like this:

"After Jo had gone, I looked at my flushed face in the glass, and tidied my hair, thinking what an awful tart I am. There was a terrible love-bite on my cheek, so I got a pin and made a few scratches across it, and told Mummy a cat had scratched me, but I don't think she believed me. Later we listened to a very stirring speech by Churchill about "blood, toil, sweat, and tears."

YOU SEE? What's important when you're seventeen (or, probably, eighty) is what you did with the cute guy, not Churchill's undying oration. Joan's diary is absolutely charming, written with a self-deprecating wit and charm that belies her years.

Note: This book is very hard to find. If it's not in the library, I think you may have to order it online...Thanks, Jenny! ( )

Good grief,what a very annoying woman Joan Wyndham appears to be. From these pages of her diary
her life seems to be an incredibly shallow one.When she is not in bed with one man or another,she is whining about her life generally. As these events take place in 1939-1941,there are one or two fragments about the war,which are of passing interest,but generally my advice would be to avoid it ,as there are many much better war-time diaries about than this.
Near the end of this rather tedious book,she does write one line which sums the whole thing up rather well,"Wish I could write about important things instead of the nonsense that I do". I Couldn't agree more. ( )