Peace, Perfect Peace

Instinctively Frances fumbled in her handbag for a torch before she faced the lights and the certainty of the lifted black-out. For some time now she had taken streetlighting for granted, but in her present sense of withdrawal she had forgotten. Set just after World War II, Peace, Perfect Peace is a poignant and humorous tale about women readjusting and rebuilding their lives after the upheavals of war. Frances Smallwood has returned from service in the A.T.S. and is staying with her mother-in-law Joanna, who has cared for her two children during the war. Tensions grow, however, as Frances comes to believe Joanna is undermining her relationship with her children for her own selfish reasons. Clare, a young novelist friend of Joanna’s, is also pulled into the conflict as she deals with her own writer’s block and romantic difficulties. Packed with fascinating details about life in the months just after the war’s end—rationing, barbed wire entanglements on the beach, and the omnipresence of dust from bombed out buildings (not to mention the difficulties of buying a dress)—Kamm’s novel also serves up complex, multi-dimensional characters who might be our own friends and neighbours. ‘The sort of novelist who makes you feel you’ve known her characters all your life. . . . swift, amusing and natural’ Daily Telegraph ‘The champion debunker of our time . . . an extremely capable and often amusing writer’ Daily Mail ‘Possesses a sense of humour that would give zest to the dullest occupation. Most entertaining and entirely human’ Woman’s Journal ‘Mrs. Kamm’s chief gift is a quick eye for the little surface peculiarities, follies, selfishnesses of the people she meets’ Evening Standard