Tell It To A Stranger

Elizabeth Berridge

Editions

Review

This handsome paperback volume of Elizabeth Berridge’s stories (long out of print) is a most rewarding and enjoyable read.  Written during the last war, when the author was in her thirties, they have a freshness that must stem from the writer’s closeness to her subject-matter - evacuees, German prisoners-of-war, the Blitz, childbirth in a country hospital.  Above all the book traces the effects on women of their dependence on men - men who may supply not just the wherewithal to live, but the reason for living in the first place.

I see that I have made the book appear to be some sort of ur-feminist tract, when it certainly is not.  With a lightness of touch and a rare idiosyncrasy of perspective, these stories are as gently amusing as they are psychologically profound. - review by John Wyse Jackson (Seán)