Flatlands

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For me, the only thing that worked less well was the dramatic ending involving a famous moment in the war. 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. The two outcasts come together amid the wild beauty of the wetlands, beneath skies filled with migrating birds and crisscrossed by Nazi bombers. But this friendship is broken when Philip overcomes his pacifist objections, steals a small boat and sails to assist the evacuation from Dunkirk. Flatlands is a haunting and lyrical novel about loneliness and the compensations of the natural world, art and unlikely friendships.

When Philip wrestles with his beliefs as a conscientious objector, Hubbard doesn’t provide easy answers for him. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. It is the story of a evacuee child (12 year old girl) from London who lands with a horrible family and eventually makes a friend of a young (23 yr. I think this would be an excellent book club choice as well and makes for a great summer read for so many readers when it goes on sale in the US in mid June.

This is a breathtaking, quietly lovely story of the impact of war, the lifelong memories shared of a brief moment in time, and the bond of friendship. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. When she finds an injured goose and takes it to the lighthouse where Philip lives, an unlikely friendship develops. The author does a commendable job of exploring life in wartime England both from the perspectives of a child separated from her family and a recluse who is a conscientious objector. Philip “knew he had an innate sense of the holy but that it had nothing to do with theology or creeds, that it was to be found, if anywhere, in the first primroses or the flight of the whooper swans etched against the pale morning sky”.

The book gave some good descriptive details of the landscape and the lives of the local people at the outbreak of WW2.Sue Hubbard is revered by her peers and her talent has been compared to that of Colm Toibin, William Trevor and Anne Enright. The story is told by 87 year old Freda, looking back at her life and how her course was changed by her short time with Philip. There, deprived of any warmth, she meets a young man - Philip Rhayader -a conscientious objector who has left Oxford and his prospective vocation in the church following a nervous breakdown. she asks him, and I found myself expecting many more scenes between them doing just that while their friendship deepened.

The first half of the novel is exposition with dramatic events beginning to gather pace only in the second half. A World War II novel family rooted in the countryside of East Anglia around Kings, Lynn and Wisbech, this story tales of a young girl, evacuated from wartime London to the countryside.Freda, a twelve-year-old evacuee from East London, finds herself in the Lincolnshire countryside living with a strange, cold and abusive couple. From the stuffy train we could see gangs of women in the fields dressed in old sun bonnets and aprons, weeding rows of potatoes and stacking bundles of hay. Full of quiet drama and sorrow at loss, cruelty and mortality' Amanda Craig'Compelling and beautifully intimate. Precise in its historical detail and admirable in its evocation of the large skies and isolation of its setting, this is a moving study of an unlikely friendship and the healing power of the natural world. Doing the right thing may not have an obvious payoff, but human faith maintains that it will eventually pay off.