Blog tour: The Best Postboy in England

Welcome to the blog tour for The Best Postboy in England by Stephen Frost!

More about the book…

Summer, 1916. Fourteen-year-old Freddie Lovegrove begins his new job as Postboy in the quiet rural English village of Eagley. But the shadow of war looms large over this peaceful idyll as Freddie is tasked with delivering news from the battlefields of France.

The villagers call him the angel of death.

Freddie is befriended by Suhani Harkness, an Indian woman living in an isolated Manor House where she tends to wounded soldiers from the trenches. Persuading Freddie to become the amanuensis to a soldier who cannot write, he finds new purpose in his work.

But the grim reality of his job weighs down ever more heavily, until the telegram he has most feared arrives from the front – news of the death of one of Suhani’s sons.

Set against the backdrop of one of the deadliest conflicts in history, this novel is a poignant and powerful exploration of the human cost of war for those left behind, and the enduring impact of grief and guilt.

More about the author…

Stephen Frost grew up in the Suffolk market town of Bungay in 1959, before leaving at nineteen to study music. A motley life in the music industry followed, exploring various avenues and culs-de-sac from pop to country to rock, until he finally alighted on classical music editing and production.

From his earliest school days a passion for storytelling was never far, an obsession that culminated in writing and directing the award-winning feature film “Leave Now” in 2018.

The Best Postboy In England is his first novel.

My impressions…

I found myself pausing a lot while reading this book. A pause to savour a beautifully written sentence – or paragraph. A pause to absorb the depth of what I had just read. A pause to think. A pause to appreciate. Even now, when I’m trying to collect my thoughts and turn them into words, I find myself pausing a lot.

This novel feels important, and every single sentence deliberate, with a purpose. How hard it must be to write about the ugliness of war in such a beautiful way. How hard it must be to write about such tough subjects like death and pain – whether physical or mental – in such a gentle manner.

I could say that the characters - all of them - were described so vividly that I felt like I knew them, or that the settings felt as real in my mind’s eye as the chair I’m sitting on now. This is all true and contributed to my enjoyment of the novel.

What I liked most about the book, however, is that it made me consider a different point of view. We have all seen and read many scenes, in films and books, about parents receiving tragic news of their sons by post during World War I. The dreaded telegrams. We have all, I assume, focussed on the distraught parents. But what about the person delivering such news, time after time after time?

If one of the purposes of literature is to make us see things differently, this is a perfect example.

Three words to describe it. Thought-provoking. Emotional. Poignant.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it perfectly fits the mood of the novel.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, this is an excellent debut.