I wanted to like this one more than I did. It was oddly shallow despite some big issues (domestic violence, shell shock, adultery...), and it read as a series of anecdotes rather than an actual novel that hung together. It provides a portrait of a small Minnesota town in the first half of the 20th century, mostly through the eyes of a young (at the start) widow and mother. I wish there had been more depth, but it was a pleasant enough read. ( )

Sweet story about small town America during the various war years. Characters are well drawn and events pull the reader along, but one gets the feeling the author is just filling in time until the main character dies- the book could have ended earlier with no great loss.

Basic plot is about a hard-done-by but sweet woman who is just ordinary but strong of spirit, able to handle the various hardships of life with recourse to reading PG Wodehouse stories.

There are mysteries that aren’t resolved in the story (who is writing the notes?) and some things are only explained very late on. This leaves the main character really quite a shell of a person. We want to see inside her more.

Pleasant read but low residue, though Hilly is a character that breaks your heart. ( )

It is 5:07 am and I haven't slept yet because I stayed up all night to finish this. It was just that good. ( )

Despite the fairly predictable plot foreshadowed in main character Nell's Page 1 obituary
(we all die! and nearly every other main character does too),
the book moves smoothly and comfortably along, with many welcome intrigues.

Nell's life evolves around the P.G. Wodehouse books she reads and is inspired by...until she learns
that he and his wife may have been Nazi collaborators. Like the unknown writer of the nasty letters,
this mystery remains unsolved. And there can be no sequel because, again, most everyone dies.

This is too bad as it seems an easy way out: the remaining world though Hilly's eyes would have been
one amazing story. ( )

Want a gentle piece of humanistic escapism about a single mother who lives in a small Minnesota town that covers the first half of the 20th C.? This is it. Not humorous in the vein of Lake Wobegon but warm and neighborly like that fictional late 20th C. community.

Nell copes with the shocks and stings she receives from the losses of family and friends by retreating into nightly readings of time-honored classics at first, but she eventually discovers a new author who writes about characters and a place so removed from her world that she wonders why she can possibly find stories about pomaded, flannel wearing, silly and foppish upper-crust young Brits. But she does and like Nell, we realize that the appeal of P.G. Wodehouse novels isn't the "who" are these particular people who populate garden parties, tennis matches, and London flats but the "universality" of human foibles, weaknesses, "fixes," and wit.

For a first time novelist, Sullivan is polished and comfortable but not daring nor original. She's written a readable but not exceptional book that most who encounter it will find just the thing to occupy them on a long flight or while waiting for the kids to have their swimming lessons at the pool. ( )