The Wind off the Sea is a sequel to The Chestnut Tree, a book about how a group of women from the British town of Bexham struggled through World War II. This book takes place during the hard years immediately after the war, when the characters must deal with shortages, terrible weather, and their own grief. All have endured losses, and even those whose families were relatively unscathed by the war have great challenges to face in its aftermath.

There are lots of characters. Meggie was a spy during the war who now must cope with unexpected financial difficulties and possible bankruptcy. Judy bravely endured the war thinking that her husband had been killed. They’re reunited now, but he has changed and she feels alone. Mattie had a torrid wartime affair with a married American, and now raises her illegitimate son amid the snickers of the villagers. Rusty had a miscarriage and is nearly unhinged with grief. Loopy is a talented painter, but her family ignores her efforts, and her husband might be up to something behind her back. And so on.

Into this disheartened community comes a handsome and dashing American, Waldo Astley, who is also apparently extremely rich. Before you know it, he’s got the whole town on its toes. His generosity is amazing, as is his ability and determination to shake people out of their woes. But one can’t help but question Waldo’s motives for all these good deeds.

The author does a good job invoking the atmosphere of England just after the war. She is very successful at describing a sense of anticlimax in the characters. They’d expected life after victory to be more, well, victorious; the reality is instead rather grim. I could not find a flaw in the author’s historical depiction; indeed, my only accuracy quibble is that the American characters all sound too British, and that’s not really a big deal to me.

What is a big deal is that, for a variety of reasons, this book is kind of boring. I haven’t read The Chestnut Tree, so the sheer number of characters was confusing. I eventually figured out who everyone was, but even so, I kept being surprised by things that seemed highly incongruous to me. For instance, quite near the end of the book, Meggie lends Mattie an antique dress for Mattie to be married in. Now by that time I knew who Meggie and Mattie were, but I’d no idea that they even knew each other, much less that they were close enough friends to be exchanging clothes. As far as I can recall, they hadn’t shared a single scene until that one. I still have no idea why Rusty is the only character who speaks ungrammatical English (aside from Meggie’s occasional languid “ain’ts,” which are obviously an affectation). As a result of such little puzzlements, I never got the feeling that I knew these characters well at all.

That’s not the only reason I was bored with The Wind off the Sea. It may be thrilling to read about a character mastering her fear during the Blitz. It is not quite so fascinating to read about the same character enduring yet another bout of the flu, or wishing that rationing would come to an end so she can have sugar in her tea. There’s a lengthy subplot about one character who (under the influence of the philanthropic Waldo Astley) becomes a more daring and adventurous bridge player than he’d ever been before. One particular game of bridge is described with exacting attention to detail. If you read the bridge column in the newspaper every day, I suppose you might find this compelling; I thought it was excruciating.

Adding to the problem is that the book is extremely loosely plotted. Lots of things happen to lots of people, but it never seems to go anywhere. Some of the characters fall in love. For some of them this happens quite out of the blue, as they have spent almost no time together. I was not convinced or terribly intrigued. And then someone dies.

This leads me to another topic. You know how, in some non-genre fiction, it seems that the author throws a tragedy in at the end, just so that everyone knows that this isn’t a <shudder&gt romance novel? That’s how this character’s death seemed to me. I felt manipulated and, frankly, not terribly grieved; it wasn’t as though I’d ever felt any particular interest in any of these characters, after all. If I’d fallen in love with them, I’d really have felt cheated.

If you’ve read The Chestnut Tree, you will almost certainly enjoy this book more than I did. Even if you enjoyed that book, I suspect you might find this one a bit of a letdown. While The Wind off The Sea is well-written and sometimes interesting, it just doesn’t have enough plot to keep the pages turning.