Flatlands

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Doing the right thing may not have an obvious payoff, but human faith maintains that it will eventually pay off. The plight of evacuee children such as Freda sent away from their homes to live with strangers and the uncertainty associated with the same is at times difficult to read. In addition to the stories of people in the countryside, there is one particular scene setting in Dunkirk where the small boats are evacuating the retreating soldiers, which is highly visual and contrasts, with the domesticity of much of the rest of the story. Peter, who has taken up residence in an abandoned lighthouse, teaches Freda about birds and books, so of course I love their friendship.

Philip worried about her a lot, and they were both united by their loneliness and their lost sense of belonging. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.The poignancy of being elderly without family contrasts with her life without her parents during her evacuation. The man is a pacifist in WWII, working in the fields, living in an old lighthouse, painting in his spare time, and thinking constant circular thoughts about the purpose of his life and if he is right to be here, if pacifism is right, if there is a God, etc. The descriptions of nature and the powerful sense of place are stunning and evocative, and the novel is drenched in the atmosphere and chill of the Wash. Her luck of the draw is a cold, sometimes cruel, family who see her not as a child but as a house worker and stipend.

Yes, the characters might dislike me ignoring them and the resulting redemptive power of nature, but with Jim Crace books to get us really earthy and mired in, and the classic "Waterland" always deserving a re-read, this just could not justify my continuing. I found it to be meditative and atmospheric - I could feel the cold chill of the Wash/Fens seaside and the uninsulated lighthouse and then be warmed when Freda and Phillip have a cup of tea and heat their wartime too thin bodies. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. A conscientious objector, here along the flat lands of the fens, working on the land with his hands, he had discovered peace.The Author's Note that opens this book tells us that she has reworked Paul Gallico's novella, The Snow Goose, as a novel for adults. Finally, there was a sense of a "crush" that she had on the painter (would not be shocking in a just turned 13 year old and he certainly never acknowledged it.