2016 book 111

Sarah-Jane Stratford's Radio Girls
This book is primarily the story of a young Canadian woman in London who gets a job as a secretary at the BBC in its infancy in the late 1920s, with all sorts of great female camaraderie and mentorship, great period details, etc. I did wish that a somewhat underbaked political/corporate espionage plot didn't appear partway through--I was much more interested in a woman working a professional job, learning the ropes, helping to plan radio programs, and so on, and just when all of that was getting really interesting, a sort of mystery element would take over. It just wasn't necessary! The characters and settings and office politics and secretly gay people and proto-feminism (women in England get the vote during the course of the story) are perfectly interesting without villainous fascists interfering. I was psyched to read the author's note at the end that several of the characters were actual historical figures, and that Hilda Matheson really was that awesome. Fun stuff! A-/B+.