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A review by jaironside
Flambards by K.M. Peyton
3.0
For starters this is not a horsey book - so if that's what you're looking for, based on Peyton's other works, you might be in for some disappointment. Personally I also didn't find it to be the great and multi layered classic it's lauded as. It might be that this is a book it's better to have come to as a child or if you haven't already found the themes it encompasses done better and with more sympathetic characters elsewhere. So if you've read Eva Ibbotson's adult books (or you watch Downton Abbey) for example, this might be a bit unsatisfactory.
Still, it was a quick easy read and I basically enjoyed it (apart from two areas where I became so disgusted with the characters' behavior that I was fuming - in that sense perhaps the book did do well in representing the social injustices of the time.)
The horses are there more as a comparison with the air craft: neither are given too much depth (although I could have done with about a quarter of the description of fox hunting tbh - not a supporter. Great British past time my a**e) but they serve to represent the old ways of the gentry and country side in comparison to the new coming ways of social equality, technological advancement and comparative freedom. There's no clear winner and there's a definite sense of sorrow for the passing of the times when a semi feudal state meant a land owner looking after his land and people and lived close to the land that supported him. (Not that the Russel family are great representatives of this but that is the beau ideal) this aspect of a nation already being pulled in two directions pre WWI was done well.
I enjoyed the start - orphans are rich fodder for stories of course and Christina couldn't have had a worse start at Flambards. I liked her practicality and resilience. And that's where it stopped because after that first hunt she falls into the same lazy way of thinking and acting as the rest of the family. She has moments of 'I ought to do something' but she doesn't follow through. In the end her willful ignorance, complete inability to show a hint of spine and flashes of gross cowardice nearly made me put the book down. I think she only appeared to advantage compared to the other other characters - her uncle a bitter, broken drunkard who is violent and intractable, her brutish and stupid cousin Mark and her arrogant and thoughtless cousin William. I'm sure the point was to show how a great family gone to seed had allowed the dark ages in which gave the new ways a foot hold but they were all equally detestable.
And yet I was engaged and did keep reading until the end, and will probably read the other books. There's definitely something here but a lot of Peyton's other books are much, much better.
Still, it was a quick easy read and I basically enjoyed it (apart from two areas where I became so disgusted with the characters' behavior that I was fuming - in that sense perhaps the book did do well in representing the social injustices of the time.)
The horses are there more as a comparison with the air craft: neither are given too much depth (although I could have done with about a quarter of the description of fox hunting tbh - not a supporter. Great British past time my a**e) but they serve to represent the old ways of the gentry and country side in comparison to the new coming ways of social equality, technological advancement and comparative freedom. There's no clear winner and there's a definite sense of sorrow for the passing of the times when a semi feudal state meant a land owner looking after his land and people and lived close to the land that supported him. (Not that the Russel family are great representatives of this but that is the beau ideal) this aspect of a nation already being pulled in two directions pre WWI was done well.
I enjoyed the start - orphans are rich fodder for stories of course and Christina couldn't have had a worse start at Flambards. I liked her practicality and resilience. And that's where it stopped because after that first hunt she falls into the same lazy way of thinking and acting as the rest of the family. She has moments of 'I ought to do something' but she doesn't follow through. In the end her willful ignorance, complete inability to show a hint of spine and flashes of gross cowardice nearly made me put the book down. I think she only appeared to advantage compared to the other other characters - her uncle a bitter, broken drunkard who is violent and intractable, her brutish and stupid cousin Mark and her arrogant and thoughtless cousin William. I'm sure the point was to show how a great family gone to seed had allowed the dark ages in which gave the new ways a foot hold but they were all equally detestable.
And yet I was engaged and did keep reading until the end, and will probably read the other books. There's definitely something here but a lot of Peyton's other books are much, much better.