Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I’ve been putting off my review of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir for months and months, not because I didn’t love it but because I did and I’ve been struggling with how to characterize it. At this point, however, I’m just going to jump in, because needs must! So, without further ado…

This book was delightful, but in the most substantive way possible. (I’m hoping you know what I mean by that, because it’s now officially the holidays, and explaining it feels too time consuming.) I can’t help comparing it to Dear Mrs. Bird, which is also a debut novel set in England during WWII, but where Dear Mrs. Bird focuses on the young adults of the time, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, if anything, focuses on a village. Within that village we have a group of protagonists, including a few children, one young (barely) adult, a widow whose son has just gone off to war, a devious midwife of indeterminate age, and various other adults of various ages–in other words, it’s a story about a community. Some members are thoroughly unreliable narrators, which provides some of the comic relief necessary in any story that deals with war and loss; others are more reliable but still manage to grow a good bit over the course of the novel.

You know what? I think I’m going to leave it there. If I were to try to summarize the various villagers’ stories and how they weave together, we’d be here all day–and at the end of November, ain’t nobody got time for that. Suffice it to say that Jennifer Ryan does an impressive job with the weaving; there’s a lot going on here, but it’s skillfully handled and connected. This is a book that balances tragedy with triumph, heartbreak with humor, and gravity with a solid dose of the absurd, and I’m not sure I can recommend it highly enough. Prepare to cheer for Mrs. Tilling and the members of Chilbury’s new Ladies’ Choir!