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Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and funny wartime memoir
Review: Joan Wyndham's colourful and enthralling wartime diary covers the period from August 1939 to May 1941. Not quite seventeen at the outbreak of war, she has been raised a good Catholic but is nevertheless eager to experience the sins of the flesh. She encounters a number of eccentric, bizarre and outrageous men before finally falling for glamorous, impossible Rupert. The story of her cheqeured sex life is interwoven with vivid and fascinatign descriptions of London bohemian life among artists, writers, actors and philosophers. Much of it is very funny, yet tragedy is never far away. For instance, there is a delightful description of dancing at the Cafe de Paris to Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson and his band, then a few chapters later comes the stark tragedy of the bombing of the Cafe, with Ken and all but one of his band killed. Joan's ups and downs with love, friends, family and food are vividly and charmingly described. The book ends with her joining the Wrens, you can read about her adventures as a Wren in the equally entrancing sequel to this book 'Love is Blue'.
Rating:
Summary: This is a book that DEMANDS republishing
Review: These are the diaries of a young girl (only 17 when the war starts) and her journey into adulthood. She becomes (or plays at being) a painter, joins the Bohemian art culture, is seduced by a variety of men and keeps this frank, funny, appalling journal. Read it - you may view your grandmother in a whole new light!
Rating: 
Summary: Vivid, often appalling, sexual awakening
Review: Wyndham's diary of herself as a 17 year old girl entering headfirst a world of decadent artists (with seemingly no qualms whatsoever) and making out with just about every man she meets is astonishingly, vividly written-- full of dialogue and sharp characterization, and hardly any girlish wondering or dreaming. This is nearly impossible to put down, and often very erotic. But I found it unsettling, too-- there's a cold-bloodedness she and her whole world have towards sex which jars with the emotion she also seems to feel for some of the men so that I didn't get much emotional payoff from the book. It fascinated, but didn't move. For example, none of her relationships are exclusive ones; she knows all her boyfriends have other girlfriends ("mistresses," since they sleep together), and despite all the attention given to sex nobody ever seems very interested in intimacy-- or in love, despite the title. Still it's a very quick, enjoyable read-- a bit like reading some of the short stories that used to be in Cosmopolitan. I didn't really like Joan or any of her friends, but I didn't mind being in their company.
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