So I’m visiting the Kindle Store wondering how best to spend a $10 Amazon gift certificate from Company X. Remember I need to get maximum reading value from my money. And as I’m sighing over how expensive the Bloomsbury Reader Kindle editions for E.M. Delafield are, I notice two titles with the magic price of $0.00. Of course I snap them up thinking they’ll be good reading for our trip to Texas next year. But you know that’s like me saying I’m going to parcel out my stash of classic Aero bars or Lindt Almond truffles. Last night I was plundering Mr Kindle for something to read and clicked on E.M. Delafield’s The War Workers.

Now if you do know who E.M. Delafield is, it’s most likely for her most famous book, 1930’s Diary of a Provincial Lady. Which is a lovely and charming book and if you haven’t read it and you adore a cozy read? Track it down! I’ll wait here with an Aero bar while you snap it up from the Kindle Store. But remember there’s more to E.M. Delafield besides our friend the Provincial Lady.

The War Workers focuses on a supply depot in World War I Britain run by Charmain Vivian, known as “Miss Vivian” to the women who toil under her iron fist. Working at the supply depot isn’t easy and the ladies run themselves ragged to tend to the troops coming through on trains and Miss Vivian’s extremely high standards. There are people in the supply depot who feel guilty for taking their well deserved lunch if Miss Vivian doesn’t stop for breaks. If Miss Vivian says “jump”, the ladies say “how high Miss Vivian?”.  The supply depot staff (with the exception of Miss Vivian) when they’re not at the office, train station or manning the military canteen after a long and full day of work, all live in a cramped hostel run by very well meaning and kind manager who tries her best. Our depot ladies range from Miss Vivian devoted secretary Miss Delmege who can’t ever stop singing Miss Vivian praises (no one likes her) to the sweet friendly to everyone girl (Tony-played my head by the very young Deanna Durbin), the distressed Mrs Potter, the always running late Miss Marsh and Welsh newcomer Grace Jones (yes it took more than a few pages to NOT picture Grace Jones the model/singer/actress-this Grace Jones is tidy and well scrubbed and sensible as they come with the tiny exception of getting faint at the sight of blood, of course the dogsbody secretary Miss Delmege loathes her) who butts heads with Miss Vivian.

Oh good golly Miss Molly. Miss Vivian. In my head, Miss Vivian is played by Emma Thompson at her most brittle and nasty. You can almost hear her supply depot staff scraping and bowing and curtseying as she enters a room. At one point her devoted staff think of her as being very much like Queen Elizabeth I. I kept wondering where Charmain Vivian falls on the autism spectrum. And at a few times, how she would rank on the psychopath test. She’s well born (the Vivian family are the local gentry), she has had all the advantages in life and her elderly father adores her. But she’s colder than a marble statue smack dab in the center of the Arctic Circle and has no regard or feeling for her family or the women who are working themselves sick to meet her demands.

At one point, Miss Vivian is forced to stay at the hostel with her staff. The manager of the hostel, Mrs Bullivant gives up her own rooms so Miss Vivian can have as much comfort and a splendor as the hostel can give, the supply depot ladies toil to make the tiny rooms as bright and cheery as can be. There is war on. And the hostel isn’t The Ritz but they make it cozy and even give up some of their own few treasures for Miss Vivian. Heaven forbid Miss Vivian not have a perfect mirror or her very own teapot. Their fearless leader’s reaction? To complain to her former governess in a letter about the horrid conditions and plot to leave as soon as possible. But those same horrid cramped conditions? Just fine and dandy for our supply depot ladies.

When Miss Vivian’s true nature is revealed? Her once devoted staff lose their blinders and find better lives with people who deserve their devotion with the exception of only a few people who you know will never give up their hero worship of Miss Vivian, not even if she stabbed a puppy right in front of them.

Miss Vivian is such a toxic force reading parts of The War Workers dealing directly with her is a chore. I might have wanted to bundle Miss Vivian into a trunk and stick her on a train headed straight for France and the trenches. When Lady Vivian (Miss Vivian’s mother) says she should have whipped the very young Charmain, I wanted to stand up and shout “here here” in my very best George from Blackadder Goes Forth voice. Lady Vivian is a voice of reason and a novel written around her story with Charmain in the very edges would have been quite lovely. She’s not a saint and her open dislike and handling of Charmain after a tragedy is a breath of fresh air. Charmain can take a situation or leave it in her mother’s eyes and you can almost feel the relief flooding through Lady Vivian when Charmain makes her choice.

If you’ve read Angela Thirkell’s World War II era Barsetshire novels (Cheerfulness Breaks In, Northbridge Rectory, Marling Hall, Growing Up and The Headmistress) and want something in a similar vein with a bit more bite? Get thee to your local used bookstore or the Kindle Store and grab E.M. Delafield’s The War Workers. And be very, very grateful your boss isn’t Miss Charmain Vivian.