Modern Classics Lark Rise To Candleford A Trilogy [Paperback]

This trilogy was one I read many years ago and only returned to recently. On this reading it was an even better - recalling in detail a life which has totally gone now but has a wonder and joy in it which we can no longer experience. On having her fortune told - the main character was told she would be loved by people she had never met - for once astrology worked. An excellent piece of literature.

What a gem! this is a wonderful book, a close up of village life. The characters are wonderfully described and seem to breathe. No wonder it was made into a mini-series.
Read it. You will certainly enjoy it.

The setting is rural Oxfordshire, England, in the 1880s and 90s, written half a century later. Although it is an autobiographical account of the author's childhood and youth--she being Laura, rather than Flora--it is written in third-person. However, other than a few remarks comparing later events and conditions with the time period being chronicled, the narrative is not that of a mature adult reminiscing about the past. Instead, the story is told with the innocence of a young child, largely dispassionate and somewhat devoid of emotion. Although Laura is the central character, the narrator is more akin to an academic observer than a participant, but taking care to be true to mirror childlike thoughts, reactions and expectations. Facts are frankly stated without much judgmental moralizing or a cultivated perspective.

Thompson was a natural history devotee and the book reflects this proclivity in lengthy and detailed descriptions of flora and fauna. Above all this is a documentary work. Depending on the reader it can be judged as either a fascinatingly comprehensive account of minutiae from this time period in rural England, or a dreary and long-drawn-out collection of sociological and botanical trivia. There is scant dialogue or drama and no suspenseful anticipation of any kind. This is a masterful work for students of rural life in late Victorian England, but for others it may be a lot of reading (over 500 pages) to glean a few tidbits of childhood impressions and working class habits and mentality from days of yore. Yes, it does contain multiple gems and treasures to savour but be forewarned that this trilogy is not a work to be compared with the novels of Austen, Dickens or Hardy.