Page Turners – August 2022

Page Turners met in July to discuss ‘Lark Rise‘ by Flora Thompson. This is the first book of a trilogy which is normally sold in one volume as ‘Lark Rise to Candleford‘ so some members had opted to read more than just the first book. The book is autobiographical and is set in an Oxfordshire hamlet in the 1880s. It describes the detail of various aspects of life at the time through the eyes of a child. Each chapter has a different theme and tells us memories around that theme but there is not really a cohesive narrative until you move onto the later books. Some of us read for some considerable time wondering when the story would start!

We found it very interesting to explore what life was like in the 1880s and enjoyed comparing it with our own childhoods and the lives of modern children. It was particularly interesting to read about the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee so close to our own Jubilee celebrations.

Also this month we talked further about ‘Where the Crawdads Sing‘ by Delia Owens. This was our book some months ago but we returned to it because a number of us have been to see the film. We were pleased that the film did justice to the beautiful landscapes that we had read about.

Deborah Wallis, Convenor