Flambards by K.M. Peyton ~ 1967. This edition: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hardcover. 227 pages.
This will be a sketchy sort of review. This novel is so well known that anything I have to say will probably have already been said.
Much of what I do have to say here is reasonably complimentary, with caveats. I do appreciate K.M. Peyton, a prolific and popular writer who died this past December at the age of ninety-four.
Flambards is probably the most prominent of her dozens of youth/young adult novels, but it is not my own personal favourite of her works. I think I would have to say that her Ruth and Pennington arc of six novels is more compelling to me personally. And the stand-alone novel A Pattern of Roses is a bit of a quiet stunner. But more about those later this year, I think. They are all piled up waiting a re-read at some point.
Back to Flambards. Though it’s often relegated to “children’s book” categorization, it’s pretty darned “adult” in many of its themes. Think National Velvet, another “juvenile” “horse book” which really isn’t a horse book, and really isn’t a juvenile, either. The horses are important, but only in relation to the main characters. Four-legged set dressing, in a way.
Twelve-year-old Christina, an orphan since the age of five, is sent to live at her widowed and crippled uncle’s mostly-male-inhabited establishment, a troubled country estate called Flambards. Uncle Russell and his older son Mark are utterly horse-mad. The stables are spotless and up-to-date; the house is decidedly neglected. Younger son William is scorned by his father and brother for his slight stature, his intellectual abilities, and most of all for his lack of true enthusiasm for all things equine, though he’s expected to participate in the usual horse-related activities such as hunting, with devastating results.
Christina enters the house just as William is being brought home on a sheep-hurdle, leg smashed from a mishap while hunting. She forms a rather furtive friendship with William during his recuperation, though she is out of sympathy with him in one major way. Christina finds that she is also enraptured with horses and riding.
There’s a bit of a back story, revealed very early on, which frames the story. Young Christina is something of an heiress, with a fortune held in trust, and the reason she was invited to live with her Uncle Russell was so she might possibly be a suitable husband (once grown up) for her cousin (half cousin?) Mark. The money is already earmarked for sinking into the Flambards estate.
Christina is a survivor, and she further refines her get-through-it technique as the years slide by. Uncle Russell and Cousin Mark continue to bluster and bully, while William quietly crafts his exit strategy from an absolutely toxic family situation, with Christina carefully navigating the territory in between.
The novel starts out with deep drama, and the trend continues right through to the end, which is, in my opinion, a bit too unlikely and awkward feeling. It didn’t sit completely well with me, hence my personal rating of 7.5/10.
Flambards is a decently enjoyable read, but none of the characters ever won my full affection, and by the end I didn’t really care all that much about who ended up with who, or what would happen to Flambards itself.
Turn the page, close the book, set it aside. It did not occupy my thoughts in the days after reading it, as the best books do. But nonetheless it’s a keeper, and has a permanent shelf space in the K.M. Peyton stack. I’ve read it a few times over the years, and likely will again.
Flambards was a popular success and received several high profile children’s fiction awards. It was followed by two sequels in 1969, a well-received television mini-series in the 1970s, and a fourth postscript novel in 1981.
Leaves & Pages 