Lady Clemetine

Marie Benedict's Lady Clementine is the recounting of Clementine Churchill's life with Winston from their original meeting in 1908 to their marriage six months later, and then through much of their marriage, into the waning days of World War II, where Lady Clementine leaves off.

What I liked: Benedict does a fine job of highlighting Clementine's complexes and complexities. There's much here for which Clementine could be either condemned or condoned, but the well-roundedness of the character development allows the reader to assume a bit of distance and to observe rather than judge. I was also very much a fan of the style of the book. Lady Clementine covers a period of roughly 40 years, and does so in 300-ish pages. To accomplish this, Benedict's approach was to select episodes from Clementine's life and for the protagonist to narrate those key moments, such that the reader might lose 5 or 10 years at a time, but can still feel the keys bits are all captured. Any other approach would have likely felt tedious and overlong, and would have certainly been less readable.

What I didn't like: I would have liked for the book to continue beyond the war. Winston lived until 1965 and Clementine until 1977; given that the scope of this book was far beyond World War II-era, ending as it did came across as abrupt. That said, this is a minor - and stylistic - quibble in the scheme of things, and I certainly much preferred Lady Clementine to Carnegie's Maid, though the books don't purport to resemble each other, after all Lady Clementine was one of the best known English women of the 20th century, while Clara Kelly was a fictional maid to the Carnegie's. Enough said.

Four stars.