The Flight Of The Maidens ebook

by Jane Gardam

ALSO BY JANE GARDAM FICTION A Long Way From Verona The Summer After the Funeral .

Jane Gardam, author of the Old Filth Trilogy, delivers another modern classic in The Flight of the Maidens. With her characteristic wit.

Gardam provides each of her heroines with a different struggle. In terms of style, the book falls into three parts.

Jane Mary Gardam OBE FRSL (born 11 July 1928) is an English writer of children's and adult fiction.

Jane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Gardam’s style is perfect. Gardam frames her story in dozens of crisp, brief scenes featuring deliciously dizzy conversation.

The basic theme of the book is the process of separation of daughters from their family.

Jane Gardam is an accomplished novelist who takes obvious pleasure in structure. Here, she organises a plait of narratives: Hetty, Una and Lieselotte

Jane Gardam has quite perfectly captured a bygone era as she tells this tale of three young women who have just left school in the summer of 1946 and are preparing for university. With her characteristic wit, Gardam captures a moment in time for three young women on the cusp of adulthood.

Flight of the Maidens

Adokelv

Gave it away as a gift

Goktilar

She can do little wrong for me, and this coming-of-age of three young girls, post WW2 GIRLS is satisfying and different . Beautifully written of course.

Bearus

A wonderful story that reprises themes from Jane Gardam's earlier books and foreshadows her later works, in particular 'Old Filth' and 'The Man in the Wooden Hat'. The beginning is a little slow moving, but by half way she is well into her stride as a witty, moving and accomplished writer.
This is definitely a book worth reading.

inform

Ms Gardam is a beautiful writer. She takes you right into the decade ( WWII ), and the emotions of several teenage girls. "Old filth" is also excellent, as are her short stories.

Huston

This novel takes place in Northern England during the summer of 1946 and is centered around 3 young women in their late teens who, through competitive examinations, have won scholarships to elite universities (Cambridge and the University of London). Two of them - Hetty Fellowes and Una Vane - were childhood friends. The third --- Lieselotte Klein --- is a German Jew from Hamburg who was fortunate enough to escape to Britain via the Kindertransport shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939. She was brought to the town where Hetty and Una lived, attended school with them, and lived with a Quaker family. However, after a prolonged search to see if any of her family survived the Holocaust, Lieselotte moves to London, where she is placed with an Austrian Jewish couple, the Feldmans. The novel gives the reader a view into the lives of Hetty, Una, and Lieselotte, who each embark upon a voyage of self-discovery as the summer melts into autumn. Each experiences a rite of passage that tests their resolve to forge a future largely of their own making in a chaotic world struggling to learn anew the ways of peace.

Windbearer

Witty, moving, suspenseful,historically fascinating, true to the hearts and minds of young women about to be launched from home, lyrical, full of eccentric characters and settings. Gardam has the gift of writing delightfully funny fiction which is at the same time sensitive to the subtle emotional life of her characters. Among other things, this is an incisive picture of friendship. Best of all, she manages to make kindness triumph over all sorts of adversity, from madness to losses from war and the Holocaust to confusion in romantic relationships.
This novel brought me deep happiness.