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Land Girls #2
Souviens-toi de Hallows Farm
La Seconde Guerre mondiale vient de s'achever. Rentrée à Manchester après son séjour à Hallows Farm en tant que volontaire agricole, Prue rencontre Barry, un homme d'affaires prospère. Elle consent à l'épouser, sachant qu'il lui assurera le confort matériel. Mais son bonheur est de courte durée : elle est livrée à elle-même, et perd à la naissance l'enfant qui donnerait un sens à sa vie. Si la complicité de Johnny, son voisin poète et menuisier, la sauve un peu de la routine, sa seule véritable joie est de revoir Ag et Stella, ses amies de Hallows Farm, et d'évoquer avec elles leurs années de bonheur.
Prue a beau savoir que cette époque est révolue, elle en garde une violente nostalgie. Sa séparation d'avec Barry, son amitié pour Ivy, une vieille dame à qui elle tient compagnie, ses amours contrariées n'auront pas raison de son rêve : celui de vivre dans une ferme à l'image de celle de Mr et Mrs Lawrence. Angela Huth entraîne le lecteur au cœur des pensées intimes d'une jeune femme comme dans les magnifiques paysages de la campagne anglaise, avec un souffle romanesque renouvelé.
Prue a beau savoir que cette époque est révolue, elle en garde une violente nostalgie. Sa séparation d'avec Barry, son amitié pour Ivy, une vieille dame à qui elle tient compagnie, ses amours contrariées n'auront pas raison de son rêve : celui de vivre dans une ferme à l'image de celle de Mr et Mrs Lawrence. Angela Huth entraîne le lecteur au cœur des pensées intimes d'une jeune femme comme dans les magnifiques paysages de la campagne anglaise, avec un souffle romanesque renouvelé.
490 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 2010
10 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Angela Huth
60 books18 followersDaughter of actor Harold Huth, english novelist Angela Huth married journalist and travel writer Quentin Crewe in the 1960s and with him had a daughter. She presented programmes on the BBC, including How It Is and Why and Man Alive.
She also writes plays for radio, television and stage, and is a well-known freelance journalist, critic and broadcaster. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She has been married to a don, James Howard-Johnston, since 1978. They live in Warwickshire and have one daughter, Eugenie Teasley.
She also writes plays for radio, television and stage, and is a well-known freelance journalist, critic and broadcaster. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She has been married to a don, James Howard-Johnston, since 1978. They live in Warwickshire and have one daughter, Eugenie Teasley.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 29, 2010
I loved The Land Girls and I waited months for this sequel to come from UK. . .but SO disappointing. None of the heart and warmth of the first book, and I felt like Angela Huth just wrote it because she needed money, or had to keep her name out there.
March 3, 2018
I would have liked it more if it was less focussed on Prue. A chapter per girl, alternating, would have been better but the bits that did cover Ag and Stella made it seem like there wasn't much going on in their lives anyway LOL
August 8, 2022
2,5 ⭐
Je m'attendais à autre chose.
Je m'attendais à autre chose.
March 18, 2018
More than an historical novel about women’s war service on farms during World War II, Once A Land Girl actually traverses the prejudices and gratitude of different survivors of conflict who did not have to do the menial tasks that others took for granted. In so many ways what is unseen by some becomes misperceived by others. Angela Huth, whether intentionally or not, challenges the layers of ignorance and knowing that each and every human being has to confront within themselves if they are to grow as healthy persons.
This book is a sequel, but I have not yet read the original work.
Written so long after the war a certain amount of romanticism may be expected about the time and people it refers to. Yet there is a particular sharpness of vision that simply says, “this is my choice at this particular moment” that seems to defy any larger all-encompassing philosophy of rightness beyond that moment for that character.
In a sense this very specificity becomes a philosophy of its own. Not just the right to choose but the right to make mistakes and claim them for one’s self no matter what others would have chosen had they been in that very position. By this very vulnerability to experience it is proven that others would not have been in the same position to choose some of these options anyway. Thus it makes their judgements moot.
It also shows that one’s own judgment is thus such a limited field that others should not fear a false impact upon themselves from anyone else’s choices. We each need to make our own discoveries about who we most want to be, and how we can best achieve that. Whatever we may consider to be “common experience” still differs for the individuals involved, despite themselves wanting anyone else’s outcomes.
Largely this multiplicity of choice seems to be a breaking free from the carpe diem theme that war forces upon us, to the “I have survived the worst” mode of post-war re-self-construction.
But despite everything we consider to be a personal choice, there seems to also remain much that is beyond our choosing. Then the ultimate position seems to be to have the good grace, or perhaps sense of humour, to make of it what can and will, and let others do so for themselves as well. This seems to be the simplicity longed for more than any “return to nature” that a theme of farming may imply to those who choose a suburban life, or let it choose them.
The extension of such a “choosing for oneself” then became the “do-it-yourself” movement that persists with commercial enterprises today supplying “kits” for people to make up the jigsaw puzzles of furniture and such-like that are weekend projects within the busy suburban illusion of labour-saving that applies their own hands where their own minds could not possibly take them as “raw resources” have been progressively tampered with by so many layers of civilising influences. But such movements are beyond the scope of this novel’s time period.
There is a single reference to Thomas Hardy which may suggest these larger progressions, but the greater focus on the works of Charles Dickens as the belated literary education of the main character surely means the importance of individuality against the rising influence of legal impositions from social pressures that stereotype is the greater concern of the writer.
Of course, for many readers these deeper levels of analysis are likely to leave them cold. They will merely romp along with the tale-telling from one viewpoint that makes everyone else’s seriousness seem good for a laugh. Such self-deprecation of the central character seems to be a large part of her own resilience to eventually find herself.
This book is a sequel, but I have not yet read the original work.
Written so long after the war a certain amount of romanticism may be expected about the time and people it refers to. Yet there is a particular sharpness of vision that simply says, “this is my choice at this particular moment” that seems to defy any larger all-encompassing philosophy of rightness beyond that moment for that character.
In a sense this very specificity becomes a philosophy of its own. Not just the right to choose but the right to make mistakes and claim them for one’s self no matter what others would have chosen had they been in that very position. By this very vulnerability to experience it is proven that others would not have been in the same position to choose some of these options anyway. Thus it makes their judgements moot.
It also shows that one’s own judgment is thus such a limited field that others should not fear a false impact upon themselves from anyone else’s choices. We each need to make our own discoveries about who we most want to be, and how we can best achieve that. Whatever we may consider to be “common experience” still differs for the individuals involved, despite themselves wanting anyone else’s outcomes.
Largely this multiplicity of choice seems to be a breaking free from the carpe diem theme that war forces upon us, to the “I have survived the worst” mode of post-war re-self-construction.
But despite everything we consider to be a personal choice, there seems to also remain much that is beyond our choosing. Then the ultimate position seems to be to have the good grace, or perhaps sense of humour, to make of it what can and will, and let others do so for themselves as well. This seems to be the simplicity longed for more than any “return to nature” that a theme of farming may imply to those who choose a suburban life, or let it choose them.
The extension of such a “choosing for oneself” then became the “do-it-yourself” movement that persists with commercial enterprises today supplying “kits” for people to make up the jigsaw puzzles of furniture and such-like that are weekend projects within the busy suburban illusion of labour-saving that applies their own hands where their own minds could not possibly take them as “raw resources” have been progressively tampered with by so many layers of civilising influences. But such movements are beyond the scope of this novel’s time period.
There is a single reference to Thomas Hardy which may suggest these larger progressions, but the greater focus on the works of Charles Dickens as the belated literary education of the main character surely means the importance of individuality against the rising influence of legal impositions from social pressures that stereotype is the greater concern of the writer.
Of course, for many readers these deeper levels of analysis are likely to leave them cold. They will merely romp along with the tale-telling from one viewpoint that makes everyone else’s seriousness seem good for a laugh. Such self-deprecation of the central character seems to be a large part of her own resilience to eventually find herself.
June 2, 2018
I have to admit that I didn't read the whole book. I skimmed through trying to find out what the book was about. It's a habit of mine. I do it with all books I read. Every time I opened the book, I noticed Prue's name. I only read Stella's name and Ag's name once or twice. The rest of the book seemed to be about Prue and her sexual exploits.
At the end of Land Girls, Prue got married to a man named Barry Two who could provide her with the security and gold bathroom taps that she wanted.
In Once a Land Girl, Barry Two is mentioned a few times, but Prue is jumping in and out of bed with different men just like she did in Land Girls. I don't want to waste my time with something like this.
At the end of Land Girls, Prue got married to a man named Barry Two who could provide her with the security and gold bathroom taps that she wanted.
In Once a Land Girl, Barry Two is mentioned a few times, but Prue is jumping in and out of bed with different men just like she did in Land Girls. I don't want to waste my time with something like this.
January 26, 2020
Unfortunately I have not read "Land Girls". And now I have not read "Once a Land Girl". The blurb on the back cover includes a quote from "The Times" mentioning Jane Austen. I like Jane Austen, but she does not mention sex on every page. I got as far as page 6 and then decided this book was not for me
October 19, 2018
I bought it for 50p at a thrift shop while in England. Ok for a vacation read. Still want to read Land Girls some day.
March 12, 2019
Not my cup of tea. Trite. Potential. Sadly unfulfilled.
May 28, 2019
I really liked this book Not that it was spectacular it was just a good entertaining book!
October 26, 2013
I was really curious about what happend to the three so I was a bit dissapointed that most of the story was only about Prudence life. Although it was well written and a nice plot I would have appreciated to learn a bit more about the others. As it is an open end, may be there will follow a third one...
May 14, 2016
I had no choice but to read this book, as I had already bought the previous one in a set. I was hoping it would prove better than the first, but I was wrong. It was worse, and all about Prue and her sexual exploits. I will stick with Margaret Dickinson in future. Also contained a couple of extremely unnecessary obscenities.Shallow, very shallow.
June 29, 2013
After the lovey Land Girls, this was just ok. Not bad enough to give up on, I still wanted to know about the girls lives. Pretty predictable.
September 18, 2013
I did not really enjoy this at all, too slow for me boring
July 11, 2014
Lovely, lovely book. I would definitely read this again!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews