My favourite book from 2021 is an edited collection of the letters written by Eileen to her future husband, Gershon Ellenbogen. The audiobook edition I listened has the subtitle “The Greatest Lost Love Letters of the Second World War”; the ebook I subsequently bought says “A Woman in a World Turned Upside Down”, while the US edition calls it “The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front”. The letters were recently discovered by David McGowan on eBay.

The letters begin in July 1939, when Eileen, who had just received a First in English from Cambridge, was in hospital recovering from a car accident. Her university friend Gershon had been driving her to London and had crashed her car.

Eileen’s letters are fascinating and lively, and the audiobook narration by Stephanie Racine captures that so well -- I was delighted to listen to this for 21 hours! (I suspect the humour is more apparent when hearing Eileen's comments read aloud and that I might have loved this book slightly less if I hadn’t listened to the audiobook.) Eileen has a knack for relaying amusing anecdotes, and for pouring herself into her letters. She’s intensely honest about her emotions -- McGowan describes her letters as “vibrant, intimate, joyous, dark, angry, obsessive, neurotic, generous, scurrilous and very, very funny”.

Wednesday 17 June [1942] I’ve just overheard a Beautiful snatch of conversation over the telephone, darling:– Mr Murray: ‘No, I don’t think they’ll eat the aircraft. – Yes, I admit that cows will eat almost anything.’

Eileen’s letters also brim with tension, because she’s living through a period of great uncertainty. The war dictates and derails many things, but also Eileen is still growing into adulthood -- adjusting to life after university, entering the workforce, becoming more independent, navigating conflict and renegotiating her relationship with her parents, watching friends build or bungle serious romantic relationships, and falling in love herself. Initially Eileen doubts her relationship with Gershon will last; later on, she has no doubts about that but she doesn’t know when she was see him again, as he’s been sent overseas.

In his foreword, Oswyn Murray says: We begin, too, to appreciate that Eileen is involved in a new literary genre with a multiple purpose. The first is to enmesh her beloved in her life, to keep him engaged with herself and prevent him straying during their long separation – the sort of narrative letters that Ovid imagines Penelope writing to Ulysses. She wants to display all her talents, her knowledge, her first-class degree, her ability to find a quotation in Elizabethan literature for every eventuality. There is also much about her friends’ liaisons – perhaps in order to warn Gershon to keep faith with her. (Murray may be right about Eileen’s motives but my impression is that Eileen cares a lot about her friends but is confused, and sometimes distressed, by some of their choices -- and discussing things with Gershon has become the way she makes sense of her world.)

Gershon’s letters to Eileen seem to have been destroyed or else more thoroughly lost than hers to him, but I enjoyed reading between the lines, trying to fill in some of the gaps. Eileen’s letters which focus on telling him her doings contain fewer clues about Gershon’s letters than the letters when she’s responding to things he’s said -- sometimes she even quotes him. It would be interesting if his letters ever surfaced, but if he were a more prosaic letter-writer it perhaps wouldn’t make a better book to include them. And would you include them in the order he wrote them or in the order Eileen read them? On 16 June 1943 she says she received letters 133 & 135, and letter 132 arrived five days later; on 4 October she gets letters 175 and 178, and so on.

Eileen kept me company during Yet Another Lockdown, and I found myself pondering the threads of similarity in living through a pandemic and living through a world war -- the fear and uncertainty and the difficulty of determining (without foresight) how much one’s government’s choices are or are not in the community’s best interests.

I found Eileen very relatable at times -- in personality and perspective, rather circumstances or experiences. I particularly identified with her tendency towards quotation and using her own idioms, although I spend less time quoting Shakespeare and more time quoting Shrek (to pick an alliterative example). She sounded like someone I might be friends with. I noticed other reviewers’ muted enthusiasm and felt very defensive. How dare other people not like my friend!

But I can see how this book wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Moreover, I doubt Eileen would have cared what others thought. She didn’t write her letters for them, she wrote them for Gershon.

What would the outside world know of my love for you, darling, if they were to read my letters? They would know what I know of the Odyssey when I read it in translation – but you are the only person, my darling, who has read the story of my love in the original and you are the only person who understands it fully & truly. That’s good, darling. It was a story which was written for you & only for you. I don’t want anyone else to understand it. It is not their story – it is only our story.

Thursday 6 February [1941...] Darling, I don’t know whether or not you’re a ‘born-letter-writer’ but I doubt whether Keats’s Fanny was as happy to get a letter from him as I am every time I get a letter from you – You know, dear, letter-writing is undoubtedly my medium – I’m not being vain, but I’m able to work off all my creative energies in my letters – because when I’m writing (and particularly when I’m writing to you, my dear love) I have the feeling that I’m living my experiences all over again – but living them more richly, because they’re being shared with a friend – and are coloured by their outlook & idiom as well as my own. Every other literary form is less personal & intimate than the letter – and I’m a very personal little cluck, aren’t I darling?

Saturday 31 October [...] Darling, I overheard a Wonderful Conversation between our cleaners in the cloakroom this morning. It ran thus:
1st Cleaner: ‘I bought an underset the other day, dear, and the man said: “That will be seven Coupons.” I said, “You’ll excuse my mentioning it but my daughter bought an underset the other day and she only gave six Coupons.” So ’e said: “Ah! Yes, but your daughter ’ad open French knickers and you’ve got closed ones.”’
2nd Cleaner: ‘An Extra Coupon for a piece of elastic? Fancy now!’
1st Cleaner: ‘Yes, dear, and when I told me mother – eighty-one she is, she said: “So now they charge you an extra coupon for being Respectable? No wonder things is all upsy down.”’ ( )

A collection of letters from Eileen Alexander written to her eventual husband, Gershon Ellenbogen, over the course of WWII. As is evident from the hyperbolic subtitle on some editions of this one, the editors adore Eileen and while I'm not sure these are "the greatest love letters of the Second World War" there's no denying that Eileen is a bright young thing. Her letters are often erudite and sprinkled with her sharp humour, filled with tales of her cronies from Cambridge as well as her friends and family, many of whom are part of the Jewish community in London. There's also ample evidence of Eileen's tremendous love for Gershon. As noted in the introduction, Eileen wrote to Gershon nearly daily when they were separated during the war and while the editors have trimmed the volume for this collection some of the sections still feel a bit long (particularly during Eileen and Gershon's lengthy separation in 1943 when he was in Egypt where it's obvious that she was very depressed by his absence). The book does include a "dramatis personae" but it's at the end of the book and would have made more sense at the beginning. While the letters end in 1946 and the editors provide excellent context for the rest of Eileen's life, I had hoped for a little more information about what happened to the family and friends she wrote about most often. Fascinating for both it's value as a home front perspective on WWII as well as the lovely glimpses of a young couple's courtship. Recommended for those who enjoy letter collections and WWII history. ( )