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A review by mat_tobin
Flambards by Victor G. Ambrus
4.0
Set within the grounds of a slowly-aging Essex Manor (Flambards), Peyton's novels sets the grounds for the end of an era and celebration of a class and the age of a new dawn which heralds cars and planes but also war. When twelve-year old Christina Parsons is sent to live with her uncle and two sons she feel that her destiny has already been written. When she comes of age, she will run into her family's fortune and will be expected to marry Mark, the eldest of the Flambard family who is as cold, brutal and selfish and his drunken father.
Yet the horses of the manor, and a stablehand, Dick as well as the youngest Flambard, William offer her hope of escape and a sense that her life could be different should she choose to escape that which has already been written for her. What comes across in the novel, for me, is the physicality. The horses, their tempers and the physical challenges of the characters set a power and strength in here that I find fascinating. There is also, in Christina, a sense of a young woman steadily challenging the gendered norms that her society expects. It is slight but it is there. I am left to wonder how much is grows in other Flambards novels.
Yet the horses of the manor, and a stablehand, Dick as well as the youngest Flambard, William offer her hope of escape and a sense that her life could be different should she choose to escape that which has already been written for her. What comes across in the novel, for me, is the physicality. The horses, their tempers and the physical challenges of the characters set a power and strength in here that I find fascinating. There is also, in Christina, a sense of a young woman steadily challenging the gendered norms that her society expects. It is slight but it is there. I am left to wonder how much is grows in other Flambards novels.