Week 17: The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake (2010: Amy Einhorn/Putnam, 326 pages)

Probably the question I’m asked most about this blog is: “How do you choose the books?” I wish I could say there was a magic formula, but the answer is just how you might expect: I read some reviews, I think about what’s going on in the world, I look at my past reading list, and sometimes it’s even more prosaic than that. Sometimes it’s just, “oh, I read this book and you should read it, Courtney – you’d like it.”

Then there’s this week’s pick, which came to my attention simply by a friend telling me they’d gone to college with the author, Sarah Blake. And that it was “supposed to be good.” So I picked it up in the bookstore, looked at it closely and ignored all the warning signs. The effusive, near orgasmic pull-quotes from other authors (“This is a superb book!” gushes Andre Dubus III; “Beautiful, thought-provoking!” exclaims Kathryn Stockett). The ominous copy on the inside dustcover: “Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight …” And, probably the worst offense, the cover art: a photograph of dried lavender rose laid on top of an old letter; clear pandering to those middle-aged women like myself, trawling the bookstores in search of good “literary fiction.” (Yes, you can judge a book by its cover.) I steeled myself, and thought about what my friend Ann said one time, speaking of The Help – a similar book with social issue buttons and tear-jerky moments: “I have to remind myself that just because everybody likes a book doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.”

I have since forgotten which friend recommended The Postmistress, which is a good thing since I spent a lot of time wanting to throw it across the room. Here’s the premise: it’s 1940. “Leggy blond” Frankie Bard is an American war correspondent who smokes her Lucky Strikes with defiance. She is determined to get to the bottom on the gathering storm in Europe. She’s heard some rumors involving refugees, Jews, trains being full, exit visas being denied. She contrives a way to get to London, where her boss, Edward Murrow (groan) directs her to get to Berlin then Lisbon, and interview these so-called refugees herself. She takes an old-fashioned version of a dictaphone (which doesn’t really exist in 1940, by the author’s own admission, but never mind) and gets these people on tape: name, where they’re from, where they’re trying to get to. You see, Frankie needs to do this because people in America are not paying attention. Not paying attention! Attention must be paid! Get that, reader? If you didn’t the first hundred times the phrase is used, maybe you will the next hundred times.

Meanwhile, in a sleepy little Cape Cod town called Franklin, the middle-aged spinster of a postmaster Iris James is sorting the mail. (For most of the novel, she is referred to as a postmaster –  I’m sure Ms. Blake has a reason to suddenly switch gears and call her the postmistress in the last quarter of the book but I have no idea why.) Order, reason, clarity are her mottoes. Everything in its place. The war belongs over there, we are over here. The doctor’s wife, Emma Fitch wanders in. She is the third of the triumvirate of women around which this novel is centered – again, I have no idea why, as she is a boring, opaque character who whines about being left by her do-gooder husband when he feels the need to contribute to the war effort by going to London to provide medical assistance. (Oddly, the doctor meets Frankie Bard in a bomb shelter. What a strange coincidence.) She hasn’t heard from him in many weeks. Where are his letters? Does Iris James know? (Hmmm … in the beginning pages, an older Frankie Bard had been reminiscing about her war years, and poses a question at a modern dinner party: “What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?” “Don’t tell me any more,” a woman had cried in delight, shining and laughing between the candles. “I’m hooked already!” Gee, you people need to get out a little more.)

Back to 1940s Europe. Frankie boards the trains, and duly gets her radio report. But she doesn’t have the story, all she has are these disembodied voices, these refugees, the middle of the story but not the beginning or the end. She knows Murrow wouldn’t like this, nor Paley (groan again). But despite the fact that Frankie being a leggy radio gal who takes no guff from any of the old boys, she is changed by her experience. She limps back to America, and finds her way to the sleepy Cape Cod town, where she bears a secret that must be told. In the feature film, Nicole Kidman will hopefully agree to take the role of Frankie, but some say that it will be Nicole Ritchie’s real breakout role in film.

You see, cynicism begets cynicism. The problem with The Postmistress, among many things, is that it is so obviously written with “movie” in mind that I couldn’t possibly take any of it seriously. It is my personal pet peeve when fiction plays around with real people and what’s more, nurtures historical inaccuracies (e.g., the war posters papering London of “Keep Calm And Carry On” – a simple Google search will tell you this now-ubiquitous slogan was never used publicly). And – the dictaphone? And – the windows in the Underground station? Windows … in a subway station?

Let’s just overlook all those minor discrepancies. What is intensely irritating about this novel are the stock characters, the trite theme, and the schoolmarmish tsk-tsk tone. At its best, The Postmistress is an ABC-TV Movie of the Week, dressed as literary fiction. At its worst, it is a Harlequin romance. You don’t think so? Take a peek:

Her back was flat up against the rough brick of the pub wall and she opened her eyes to watch him kiss her again, and when he did, she kissed him, hard. Over the ridge of his shoulder, people passed in the dark, passed in the street, and as he lifted her up and she sunk down on him, she moaned out loud … but it was dark and it was deep and we returned to the cave and the fire and the glint of life in each other’s eyes, never mind the sigh escaping, the unmistakable oh oh oh — it was all right, we were only human.

Ugh.

The Postmistress is going to be wildly popular, no matter what I write, so I don’t feel badly if I steer my few loyal readers away from it. And, while I hate to admit it, the train journey section is fairly gripping, but it is unfortunately offset by sections like the above and the silly, silly goings-on in the tiny Cape Cod town.

Read at your peril.