Flatlands

(Hardback)

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Description

Flatlands is a homage to Paul Gallico's classic short story The Snow Goose. Freda is a twelve-year-old evacuee from East London, who has been sent away at the start of the war, leaving behind everything familiar to her, to escape the expected German bombing. In her new temporary home in Lincolnshire, Freda finds herself billeted with a strange, cold and, ultimately, abusive couple, whose lives mirror the barren landscape in which they live a hand to mouth existence, based upon subsistence farming and poaching. 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. Slowly, he introduces her to the wonders of the natural world and its enduring power to heal.

Reviews

''Flatlands is a haunting and lyrical novel about loneliness and the compensations of the natural world, art and unlikely friendships. The characters of an unhappy evacuee from the East End and a conscientious objector will draw you in as they search for some kind of peace in the wide open landscapes of the fens and the story moves them to their own inevitable crises.'' - Maggie Brookes

'Praise for Sue Hubbard's previous work:' - .

'Beautifully written and wholly knowledgeable... A triumph of literary and artistic understanding, a tour de force: masterly, moving' - Fay Weldon

'A writer of genuine talent' - Elaine Feinstein

'Lyrical, highly visual and beautifully observed' - John Burnside

Author Bio

Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist and freelance art critic. She has published three acclaimed novels and numerous collections of poetry, and was commissioned to create London's largest public art poem at Waterloo. Flatlands was loosely inspired by Paul Gallico's classsic wartime novella The Snow Goose.