FLATLANDS

Two lonely souls in a remote corner of England bond over an injured white goose during World War II.

Freda is 12 in 1939, living in the East End of London when war begins, soon becoming one of the many children evacuated from the danger zone of the city to somewhere less likely to be bombed. In Freda’s case, it’s the Fens, a flat landscape of sea and marsh, where she is billeted with Mr. and Mrs. Willock on a sad, muddy farm where she will endure an isolated existence of work, not much food, and the sexual abuse of the farmer. Belonging to a different class, Philip Rhayader, the son of a World War I hero, attends prep school and then Oxford University but is mentally fragile, suffers a breakdown, and declares himself a conscientious objector. He too ends up in the Fens, living in an abandoned lighthouse, finding peace in isolation and agricultural labor, relishing the natural world and the wide landscape that engenders his urge to paint. British author Hubbard’s novel derives from Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, a famous 1940s novella set in Essex, which Hubbard has returned to Lincolnshire, the location of the lighthouse that inspired Gallico's story. Heavily descriptive, the book works hard to evoke place, time, and mood, sometimes repetitively, and can become bogged down in nostalgic minutiae; at other times it successfully evokes the aching beauty of the bleak, watery landscape alive with bird life. Narrated by Freda in her old age, the story reveals how she and Philip meet over an injured albino goose which they name Fritha, a name Freda adopts, too. The story’s climax arrives at a peak of chaos and danger for both characters, as the horrific events of the Dunkirk beaches chime with Freda’s extremis and acknowledgment of Philip’s legacy.

Alternately vivid and research-heavy, a curious tribute to a wartime parable of friendship and connection.