Dream When You’re Feeling Blue – Elizabeth Berg

Kitty Heaney, oldest daughter of three girls and two boys, is a little disappointed when her beau, Julian, is shipped overseas to fight without proposing, particularly as her younger sister Louise is engaged in all but name to Michael. As the impact of the war hits America increasingly hard, Kitty begins to transform from a self-absorbed girl into a woman who thinks before she acts and is aware of her impact on those around her. She leaves her office job to work in a manufacturing plant, to the ruin of her nails and the shock of her mother. She discovers that if letter writing is hard it may be because the feelings you think you have don’t really exist, and that other people can have feelings (and do things) you never guessed at. And she discovers that you can make sacrifices for those you love at great cost to yourself, sacrifices nobody else is ever aware of.
Opening in the early months of America’s entry into the Second World War, Dream When You’re Feeling Blue mirrors the nation’s loss of innocence with Kitty’s journey. Fiction is often a more resonant way of learning about the past than non-fiction, and Berg has woven substantial facts about the era into the prose, incorporating them into the substance of the text, so that (for example) the reader comes away with an impression not just the reality of rationing, women transitioning into non-traditional parts of the workforce, or changing mores, but the affects of these on the day-to-day lives of people. One aspect that I’d never really considered was the unrelenting impact on young children – as Kitty says,

the children’s programs on the radio offered no relief [from images of war and reminders to contribute to the war effort]: the Captain Midnight oath exhorting young listeners "to save my country from the dire peril it faces or perish in the attempt." Superman, with his long distance hearing and X-ray vision and supersonic flying speed, was now tracking down spies, as were the Green Hornet and Tom Mix.

Berg’s characters are real and rounded and complex. The Irish Catholic love of and for family resonates through Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, and informs the somewhat unexpected conclusion some sixty years after the novel opens. Lynn and I don't usually look at other people's opinions about the books we read, but I was interested in how others felt about the ending. I went to goodreads.com, where the response was indeed mixed. One review, cyears, articulates the issue perfectly:

Yes, if this were a romance, the ending would suck. But it's not. It's a character study of how an Irish-American family coped during the war. Life isn't fair, and it doesn't always end with orange blossoms and tulle veils.

Berg's novels sometimes contain romantic elements, but they're in no way romances, and I found the ending satisfying, for all the (articulately worded) reasons cyears gives. This was one of my favourite of her works thus far encountered. - Alex