The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

This is one of those books that has gotten an incredible amount of publicity.  I started reading it thinking that I was not going to like it and "what was all the fuss about anyway".  But now I am one of the many admirers.  What a fabulous plot.  Author Jennifer Ryan has captured the personalities of her characters so well.  She has created a wonderful closeness of the small village that I can just imagine the people walking around from house to house visiting each other.  I can imagine the women gathering for choir practice.

World War II has begun to involve Britain. The men of this small village have been drafted to serve. The women ban together to support those who are losing husbands and sons. As the war progresses and begins to encompass their world more and more they continue to lend strength to each other.

In this novel we follow the diary entries and personal correspondence of four women.   Kitty Winthrop, a young girl writing in her diary, Venetia is her older sister writing to a friend who has gone off to London to work for the war effort.  Mrs Tilling writes in her journal and Edwina Paltry writes letters to her sister, Clara.  So in this way we get varying perspectives of the same events, which keeps the plot moving forward with different viewpoints of the gossip and happenings that are the everyday life of a small village.

There is an accepted way of life in a small British village.  Kitty Winthrop writes in her diary about the idea of life in the countryside of England, "...I suddenly began to doubt if she really knew the countryside, how attached everyone is to tradition around here. There is something called conventional wisdom, which means we have to carry on doing things the same way, even when it doesn't make sense.  that's what countryside's about."

Then along comes Miss Primrose Trent, known throughout the novel as Prim.  She comes to live in Chilbury and is the music teacher at the Litchfield University.  She starts the Chilbury Ladies' Choir and forces the women to come out of their comfort zone.  They create the Ladies' Choir to help themselves and others keep their spirits up.  Mrs Tilling writes in her journal, "Funny how a bit of singing brings us together.  There we were in our own little worlds, with our own problems, and then suddenly they seemed to dissolve, and we realized that it's us here now, living through this, supporting each other.  That's what counts."

Among the choir members there is the widow who lost her husband in the first war and now has to send her only son off to the army.  There is the young girl, Kitty with a unrequited crush on a soldier. Her older sister, Venetia who feels trapped in the small village and is dreaming of a more exotic life. She gets romantically involved with a dashing stranger who comes to town.  Silvie, a small child, who is a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia living with the Winthrop family, hiding a family secret. Edwina, a conniving midwife, running from her seedy past. Along the way other characters come to town to stir up the mix of villagers.  The colonel who is billeted to live in the home of Mrs. Tilling. The mysterious handsome stranger who has come to the village to paint. The wounded solider who comes home to get on with his life.

All these characters help build the drama that creates so much of the intrigue, heartbreak and life and death matters this small village to deal with.  Twists and turns keep the reader's curiosity piqued until the very end of the novel.