A House in Flanders (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic Series) - Hardcover

Michael Jenkins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1560547979 ISBN 13: 9781560547976

Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company., 1993

Synopsis

An Englishman recalls the summer he spent with his titular "aunts" in Flanders in 1951, describing life there in the aftermath of the war and prior to the onslaught of modernity

About this title

About the Author

Michael Jenkins had a long career as a senior diplomat. He was knighted in 1990 and died in 2013.

From Kirkus Reviews

Pallid evocation of a summer spent in 1951 with family acquaintances in a sprawling French country house. Jenkins, now British Ambassador to the Netherlands, recalls the foibles, the petty rivalries, the domestic rituals of the various ``tantes'' and ``oncles'' he encountered during his stay, when he was but 14 years old. The family Jenkins visited centered on five women--Tantes Yvonne, Florence, Alice, Th‚rŠse, and Lise. Rounding out the cast are Alice's bumbling husband, Auguste, several thirtysomething children, and a handful of servants. Each individual is depicted as a well-worn stock figure: Yvonne is portrayed as elderly, unmarried, self-sacrificing, wise; Th‚rŠse as fawnlike and vulnerable; Alice as assertive and tightfisted; Florence's daughter, Madeleine, as dutiful but frustrated and longing to escape to Paris. One of the more effective vignettes describes the visit of a former German soldier who'd been billeted in the house during the Nazi Occupation--but here, as elsewhere, Jenkins shies away from expressing the issues in clear-cut terms and drains the confrontation of dramatic tension. Comparisons to Peter Mayle's books are probably inevitable. But where Mayle revealed a winningly idiosyncratic vision of a stranger's life in France, Jenkins remains a cipher and his adventures curiously uninvolving. (Illustrated with undistinguished line drawings.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company.
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1560547979
• ISBN 13: 9781560547976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220