La signora Miniver è una sorta di romanzo di ambientazione in cui Jan Stuther ricostruisce attraverso 37 scenette famigliari la vita di una famiglia borghese inglese alla fine degli anni Trenta. La guerra era alle porte e iniziava a scandire il ritmo tranquillo della vita degli inglesi ed il merito della Struther è proprio quello di contrapporre agli echi dei cannoni, ancora lontani, la vita tranquilla di una normale famiglia inglese. La famiglia della signora Miniver ha appena finito le vacanze e torna a Londra, in attesa di passare i fine settimana nella casa di campagna a Starlings, nel Kent. Il rapporto della signora Miniver con il marito Clem è di grande complicità, il tempo non ha scalfito la solidità della coppia, anzi, e la presenza di tre figli rende ancora più forte il matrimonio. La signora Miniver è una donna abitudinaria, ordinata, la classica signora inglese attenta alle forme. Splendido il capitolo finale in cui la signora Miniver dichiara di conservare, da 17 anni, la lista dei regali di Natale. La signora Miniver è un romanzo pieno di citazioni che mi ha ricordato “La saga dei Cazalet” di Elizabeth Jane Howard, il racconto immersivo in cui l’ambiente conta più della storia. La Struther ha scritto solo questo romanzo ed è un peccato. ( )

Not really a work of fiction, this is pretty obviously the author's own impressions of family life during World War II, disguised under a different name.
More like a series of short essays. There is no real plot, each chapter has a theme of its own and stops short of showing any action or even much conversation. Sometimes very clever and thought-provoking. ( )

The 1942 film, “Mrs. Miniver” strengthened America’s resolve in the early days of World War II The lovie was (very) loosely based on a book of the same name which itself had originated as a series of newspaper columns in The Lo0ndon Times.

Mrs. Miniver is an upper-middle class housewife who is charming, witty and the mother of three children, the oldest of whom is away at Eton. The family has a home in London’s Chelsea neighborhood as well as a country house, “Starlings.” Her life is comfortable and concerned with little more than her husband buying a new car or her vague feeling of unease about the approach of winter signifying death.

However, all that changes when the threat of war becomes real and she finds herself st the local Council office having gas masks fitted for herself and her children. Unlike the movie, the book does not go beyond the period of the “Phony War,” so there is nothing related about her husband joining those who rescued the British Army at Dunkirk, or her kitchen being invaded by a downed German pilot. Still, we see through these vignettes that beneath her frivolity and somewhat silly musings, Mrs. Miniver is made of stern stuff and that she is capable of guiding her family through a very long and nasty war.

This was an easy read and a revealing look into British life at the end of the inter-war period. ( )

This book is an absolute delight. It is a short series of vignettes in the life of Mrs. Miniver. She's a "typical" British wife and mother from the professional class. Her husband, an architect, makes enough that they can afford some servants and a house in the country, although life for them wasn't always so grand. The book takes place during the lead up to World War II. Initially, things are just "normal". Towards the end the upsets of the War begin to impinge on the lives of all British people, even those fairly well off.

The thing I rather liked about it was that even though the vignettes were built around common things, Christmas shopping, dinner parties, making lists, and so forth, Mrs. Miniver finds time to find hidden meaning in the common place. The book is also beautifully written so that one can feel the things described.

I only read this book because is showed up on a crossword puzzle my spouse was doing. I'd remembered the name, in part because it was later turned into a famous movie featuring Greer Garson, so I figured I should check it out. Life at the moment is getting increasingly weird, and I wanted something normal to help calm things down. This book managed that rather nicely. ( )

Piquant balm; use sparingly. Barely over 100 pages but full of kindly, apt observations like an ultra-refined and gracious lunch companion. Originally light columns in the Times, one can see how they were instantly a hit, and the character of Mrs Miniver established. Her neat, concise epistles pulse with the aches of lost worlds both of comfortable domestic, social, and gender roles, and of those post-Munich, prewar, and phony war days of solidarity and closure and trepidation. The flavour has that odd and enjoyable sense of being nostalgic, even of events squarely in the present. Her elegant diction is clear and familiar, plain even, but still achieves beautiful, well-turned images: "The woods were just beginning to turn, the different trees springing into individuality again, demobilized from the uniform green of summer." ( )