Sue Hubbard

“As I’ve got older, I’ve come to realize that memory isn’t a question of simply recalling the things that happened day after day, year after year, but a patchwork of events etched across our hearts.”

Eighty-seven-year-old retired librarian Freda, now a resident of a senior living facility, spends her days taking walks in her neighborhood, reminiscing about the years gone by, and documenting her memories. As the seventy–fifth anniversary celebration of the Dunkirk evacuation approaches, she finds herself flooded by her own memories of that period and she reflects on how her experiences have impacted her throughout her life.

In 1939, twelve-year-old Freda, along with several other children was sent to Lincolnshire from her London home in Bethnal Green as a part of Operation Pied Piper- an effort to keep children safe from German aerial bombings. Billeted with the Willocks, who treat her like free labor, barely providing for her basic needs despite collecting the allowance paid to them for sheltering her, she is lonely and misses her mother and Nan. One day while exploring the marshlands, she finds an injured goose and approaches reclusive painter Philip Rhayader, who lives in an abandoned lighthouse on the marshlands. Philip is a sensitive human being, a conscientious objector who left Oxford after having a nervous breakdown and now works for a local farmer. When not working he spends his time amid nature, with his painting and providing a sanctuary to the birds who take shelter with him during the winters. Philip nursed the goose back to health and the christen it “Fritha”, a name that means “protector of peace” – as Philip points out is a “good name for a goose during wartime”. Her friendship with Philip who shares his love for books and nature with Freda is the only happy memory Freda has of her time as an evacuee. But as WWII rages on, will their sanctuary be able to shelter them from the world outside?

“Life soon becomes reduced to a pile of ephemera. Why do I keep these things? These bits and bobs, meaningless to anyone other than me. Because they take me straight back, provide tangible evidence of what really happened. Proof that everything isn’t just a figment of my overblown imagination.”

Flatlands by Sue Hubbard is a beautifully-written novel. I was captivated by its vivid imagery and poetic prose. The author mentions that her story is inspired, in part by Paul Gallico’s novella “The Snow Goose”. While the author stays true to the central theme of The Snow Goose, also naming her characters Freda and Philip, (Frith and Philip in Gallico’s novella) Hubbard’s characters are developed with much depth. In doing so the author gives us a broader perspective of life during that period. 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.

Freda and Philip come from different walks of life. Philip is in his twenties and Freda is a child of twelve/thirteen. Philip’s family is affluent while Freda belongs to a family of shopkeepers. Their backgrounds, perspectives on war and life in general and struggles are distinctly different yet, their friendship is beautiful and serves as a source of comfort for both of them. Philip’s concern for Freda is the only kindness she experiences. Philip’s storyline covers his life from his early childhood and details the events that led to his reclusive life in the Fens, his conflicted feeling about war and violence, his stance as a pacifist and conscientious objector and how the events of WWII impact the same. The author also addresses sensitive issues such as mental health, sexual identity and societal expectations during those times. 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 neglect and eventual abuse Freda suffers are heartbreaking and the author is unflinching as she explores the darker side of human nature as represented by the Willocks. One can sympathize with their economic hardships but that cannot justify their treatment of Freda.

Though the author skillfully weaves Freda’s and Philip’s storylines into an engaging narrative, I found the transitions between the timelines and between the characters' individual stories to be a tad abrupt, which took a while to get used to. I also would have liked more scenes between Philip and Freda.

I should mention that this is a slow-paced and descriptive novel (the first half moves very slowly, in fact) that needs to be read with time and patience. However, the historical context, the characterizations, the imagery, and the elegant prose make for a thought-provoking and poignant read.

This is my first Sue Hubbard novel and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.
I received a digital review copy from the author and publisher via Edelweiss . All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

“Stories are created from silence and absence, though the space between words can be so wide you feel you might drown.”… (plus d'informations)

“There are so few truly wild places left, places where the night is so dark you can see the constellations, places that look the same as they must have looked thousands of years ago. Everything’s changing. So much that’s authentic is being lost. I want to remember this place as it was . . .”

Rainsongs focuses on Martha, a late-middle-aged but still youthful teacher, whose half-Irish art-critic husband has died suddenly. A tragedy two decades previous the death of the couple’s only child, ten-year-old Bruno, in a canoeing accident at a summer camp had haunted the pair, yet their relationship endured for thirty years. The story opens in the weeks after Brendan’s death, in late December 2007, the darkest time of the year. (The novel will close in June 2009 on the longest day of the year). Just before New Year’s, Martha travels to her husband’s cottage in Kerry, where he spent summers as a boy and chose to write as an adult. She wants to settle things in Ireland: clear out Brendan’s books and belongings and possibly sell the place. That shouldn’t be hard; the country is still experiencing an economic boom. However, it’s the first time Martha has been back to the cottage since the summer of the accident that changed everything, and memories are awakened. Unexpectedly affected by the savage beauty of the place and sympathetic to those who are trying to maintain the old ways, she finds herself strangely conflicted. Her original plans may need to be altered.

While staying at the cottage, Martha meets three of Brendan’s former acquaintances. There’s a childhood friend, Eugene O’Riordan, once a high-powered corporate lawyer, who’s transitioned into property development. His latest scheme is to buy out the last of the farmers and landholders (including Martha) and have an upscale spa built. Paddy O’Connell, a bachelor hill farmer in his sixties (who returned from Dublin years before to help maintain his father’s farm), is another who’s being pressured, and possibly harassed, by Eugene. Finally, there’s Colm, a young singer and poet, whose talents Brendan had encouraged. Colm also returned home to Kerry—in his case, after being away at university in Dublin. His father had died and the young man wished to support his mother’s efforts to keep the farm. The fifth generation to work the land, Colm finds that economic conditions are making it nearly impossible for small farmers to survive. He’s also “torn between what he really wants to do [write] and loyalty to his mother.” Martha observes that though Colm is young, “there’s something wise about him, about the way he experiences the world.” During her time in the cottage that Brendan inherited from his father’s people, and through her interaction with the three people familiar with her husband, she learns about sides of her spouse that she never knew.

It’s evident that Hubbard carried out a lot of research before writing this book, and it sometimes shows more than it ought to. Colm holds forth rather a lot, sometimes pretentiously and pedantically, on Irish culture and literature, the effect of the economic boom on a country unused to a seemingly endless flow of money, and the Disneyfied version of Ireland versus the real place. Hubbard also presents this character’s long internal-monologue critiques of his fellow countrymen, who know how to be emigrants but are uncertain about how to welcome new immigrants from Eastern Europe; about the ugly side of modern Ireland: “flagrant wealth on the one hand, social deprivation on the other”; and about the irony of a country that “makes a big deal of the family” yet sees increasing numbers of “young parents out at gigs on long drinking binges,” leaving their young children neglected at home. While interesting enough to read, the commentary feels forced, clunky—superimposed on the story rather than organic to it.

The author has clearly drawn on her own experience—both as a poet and an art critic— to create two of the five main characters. For the most part, all five (if we include Brendan) are credible and interesting. I was a bit fearful that the novel was going to devolve into a reworking of the marriage plot. Hubbard certainly flirts with the “two-or-more-suitors;who-will-she-choose?” device. Both Eugene and Colm are attracted to Martha. The older man represents a certain material success, fuelled by psychological wounds and unthinking greed; the younger is intelligent and spiritually connected to the land.

Rainsongs is essentially concerned with a central character’s coming to grips with change and the transformative power of the natural world and older, slower ways. There really isn’t much of a plot here. At times, the novel is a little heavy on historical and descriptive detail: almost every shop in a nearby town is described, for example. However, I was generally impressed with Hubbard’s sensitive prose. There are some beautiful descriptions of the land and sea, the wind and mist and birds that fly along the rugged Kerry coast in the vicinity of the Skellig islands, “a Christian refuge on . . . virgin crags.”

For this reason, I’ve rounded a solid 3.5 rating up to 4.
I preferred this novel over the author’s more recent Flatlands.… (plus d'informations)

Rating: 3.5

Based on Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, which I’ve never read, Hubbard’s wartime novel focusses on the friendship between Freda, a twelve-year-old girl evacuee from East London and Philip, a young man in his early twenties, a former Oxford student who’s recently spent time in an asylum after a nervous breakdown. While training for the priesthood, he had a crisis of faith. A sexual relationship with a male friend only amplified his shame and psychological turmoil. Registered as a conscientious objector, he has come to the remote fenlands to labour in the fields, but also to paint and to heal through close communion with the natural world. He is increasingly troubled by the safety he’s chosen when it becomes clear to him that stopping Hitler is a moral imperative.

Freda, the child evacuee has been assigned to a terrible, brutish family. The Willocks are themselves outcasts of sorts, living a hardscrabble existence in a squalid cottage on the periphery of the small fenlands community. Freda is neglected and taken advantage of in every way. Her beloved nan dies early in the war, her father’s run off with a bar maid, and her mother shows little concern for her daughter’s welfare, apparently preoccupied with trying to run a hardware shop in Bethnal Green.

In this sensitive but very slow-moving and unrelentingly sombre story, Freda’s and Philip’s paths cross. This event is frankly a long time coming, occurring at about the halfway point of an almost 300-page novel. The pair bond over an injured pink-footed goose. For a time, Freda has a refuge of sorts at the lighthouse where Philip lives and paints. The author’s main purpose is twofold: to explore how the relationship between the two lonely, isolated people changes the life of the younger and to show how the elder, Philip, finally gains a sense of meaning. (I have to say, however, that I did not find the action he ultimately took to be plausible. I don’t think sailing skills one learned at age twelve (which have gone unpractised for a decade or more) could be applied with the readiness Philip demonstrates. I’m doubtful, too, about the philosophical conclusions he’s able to reach while in the midst of chaos and crisis at Dunkirk.)

While there is certainly beauty in this novel, I felt the book was longer than it needed to be. The sections focussing on Philip seemed unnecessarily repetitive. The ruminations of a deeply introverted, psychologically injured person do not make for riveting reading. In addition, the author evidently did a lot of research and appears to have not wanted it to go to waste. Too many names of prominent artists and intellectual figures of the time and too many details from BBC Home Service war reports also contributed to the tedium. With these things in mind, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Flatlands.… (plus d'informations)

Freda is evacuated to the area around The Wash in Lincolnshire. She is lonely and abused in her host family. Phillip is a sensitive young man who is a conscientious objector living in an abandoned lighthouse. The two find each other when caring for an injured goose and together make decisions about their future.
This story is loosely based on the Gallico story 'The Snow Goose' and the life of Peter Scott but is wholely fictional. It is a very emotive tale which handles big issues with sensitivity. However the love for the landscape is written in every word and really focuses the story.… (plus d'informations)