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Title: In Distant Fields
Author: Charlotte Bingham
Narrator: Kim Hicks
Format: Unabridged
Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-12-08
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 5 votes
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
Partita's parents are enchanted by Kitty, and she soon becomes part of their privileged and glamorous lifestyle. It seems that the family's grand way of life is unassailable. It is not.
Members Reviews:
In Distant Fields - (I should have stayed distant)
The basic plot of this story is the friendship of two young women, Kitty Rolfe and Lady Partita Knowle, who are friends at their London day school and become close when Partita invites Kitty to her family's magnificant English castle, Bauders, for Christmas 1913.
The story opens well enough. We meet Kitty who is wellborn but poor, with a father who is a disgraceful rake, and it's interesting to watch how she and her mother cope with their lack of money for proper clothing for Kitty's visit to Partita. But the story quickly becomes deadened by its slow pace, predictability, and total lack of lively dialogue.
For some reason never quite clear to me, Kitty is irresistibly attractive to three young men who are a part of the family's life (Partita's brother, Almeric; Harry, the upwardly-moving son of the butler, and Peregrine, a family friend, who is also the brother's best friend). Kitty's somewhat attracted to Peregrine, but because Partita loves him, doesn't pursue him as she could have done, and eventually becomes engaged to Almeric. Then the war intervenes.
I picked this up because I shamelessly love to read British aristocratic-family sagas that are set in Edwardian/First World War/post-WWI England. Although this novel is, generally speaking, readable, it is too sentimental. It also incorporates every possible stereotypical First World War-English aristocratic type and cliche that readers familiar with the period (either through novels, history books or television plays) can imagine.
The family, its servants, and its friends struck me as dry and undeveloped. Worse, the plot and its characters are derivative of other work. If you've ever seen the TV serials "Upstairs, Downstairs" (the old version, for which the author and her husband wrote some early scripts), or "Downton Abbey", or "Berkeley Square", elements of this book will seem too familiar, and unoriginal.
And I don't think I've read a more idiotic, unlikeable character than Partita Knowle, who is supposed to be so charming and lovely, but who absolutely comes across as a selfish, empty-headed fool.
Even when certain characters are lost in the war, it means nothing at all - it's impossible to feel any emotional involvement in this story or these frustratingly unreal characters. I could barely finish the book and felt annoyance with its contrived soap opera of a plot and weak characters.
Far from one of her best
Charlotte Bingham has for years been one of my favourite authors, but her latest books have been somewhat disappointing. Both "Friday's Girl" and "Daughters of Eden" failed to live up to my usual expectations.
I got "In Distant Fields" in hardback with high hopes. I liked the idea, setting and characters. The description of life of the aristocracy in England before and during the first world war is detailed and accurate. Likewise, the mood of the people as was is approaching. Even the differences in the ways of speech between the upper and lower classes are faultless.
Yet, in spite of all this, the book never managed to catch my attention. After reading a few pages, I put it dow.
