Land Girls by Angela Huth, Carole Boyd (Read by)

From the Publisher

The year is 1941 and John and Faith Lawrence's farmhands have been called away to serve their country. Desperate for help, the Lawrences take advantage of England's new Land Army plan, which brings young women out of the house and into the fields. But the three "land girls" that John and Faith receive may be more trouble than they bargained for. Prue is a boy-hungry hairdresser from Manchester, abruptly transferred from the world of lipstick and rouge to a life of plowing, sweating, and manure shoveling. Agatha is a brainy Cambridge undergraduate who is eager to share her understanding of Homer (among other things) with Mr. Lawrence's oldest son. And Stella is a dreamy Surrey girl who finds herself devastated by her separation from her lover, Phillip, who is currently fighting in the English Navy. Three young women from different backgrounds find themselves thrown together, sharing an attic bedroom and developing friendships that will last a lifetime. Land Girls is the poignant, intelligent, and often heartbreaking account of their first summer together. With wit, charm, and emotion, Angela Huth has created a novel of delicate passions, richly observed.

Publishers Weekly

As WW II rages in the background, three young city women learn about love and themselves on an English farm. High drama and intense meaning, Huth (Invitation to the Married Life) shows in this charming work, manifest themselves not just in grand battles but also in everyday life. Serving in the Women's Land Army of replacements for farmhands gone to war are Ag Marlowe, a studious Cambridge undergraduate, Prue Lumley, a sexy, working-class hairdresser, and the dreamily romantic Stella Sherwood (who wonders: "What's the point of life if you're not in love?"). For a year, the three share an attic dormitory at the Lawrence farm in Dorset. Hard outdoor work-daily pre-dawn milking, clipping the hooves and befouled hindquarters of sheep, cleaning the pigsty-is a constant. So is the presence of Joe, the Lawrences' handsome, asthmatic son. The war itself slashes into farm life only occasionally-through the death of one of Prue's friends, through government control of food and clothing-as the emphasis remains on the personal relationships and understandings of the characters. And these characters are fully realized-not just the women but supporting players as well, including the 53-year-old Mr. Lawrence, who, upon first seeing Stella at work, is nearly overpowered by the urge to touch her neck. Here are women and men whom readers will take to their hearts, and a story they will cherish. (June)

Library Journal

Many World War II novels about England tell of women in service uniforms falling in love with dashing aviators. The young women here take a different approach. Prue is a hairdresser, Agatha is a Cambridge graduate, and Stella is in love with a naval officer. They become land girls-volunteer farm workers in the English countryside-and in the process friends for life. Agatha falls in love with the farmer's son, an asthmatic would-be scholar; Prue falls in and out of love (and bed) several times; and they all become attached to the animals, the owners, and Ratty, a colorful old man. This is super reading. The characters are alive, distinctive, and in some cases lovable, and Huth (Invitation to the Married Life, Grove Weidenfeld, 1992) describes them perfectly. The love they find takes many forms: poignant, passionate, and prosaic. Highly recommended.-Barbara Maslekoff, Ohioana Lib., Columbus

School Library Journal

YAPrue, attracted to every man she meets, is a hairdresser from Manchester; shy Agatha is a student at Cambridge University; and dreamy Stella is madly in love with a Navy lieutenant. The young women meet as Land Girlsvolunteer workers who took the place of farm hands fighting in World War II. Their hosts, the Lawrences, are struggling to make ends meet. Crowded together in a small house, the girls become a team, and finally as close as a loving family. This novel is a nostalgic snapshot of an earlier timeone year on a small farm in southwest England, where the war at first seems far away. Inevitably, the bombs and the heartache come closer. YAs will sympathize with the characters, who are faced with adapting to a changing world and struggling to succeed and to excel. The picture Huth paints of rural England provides a view of World War II very different from history-book accounts of battles lost and won.Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

Kirkus Reviews

It's rural England during WW II and the air is heavy with cordite, sheep dung, and romance in this wonderfully wise, evocative, and moving seventh novel by British author Huth (Invitation to the Married Life, 1992, etc.).

Prudence, Ag, and Stella arrive in Yorkshire in 1941 to work as "land girls," young women trained by the government to replace the male farmhands who are off fighting for their country. These three, who've never met before, are assigned to the farm of John and Faith Lawrence, where they find themselves sharing an attic room and rising before daybreak to milk cows, muck out pigpens, and clean sheeps' rumps, among other tasks. As they become familiar with what farm life is really about, the girls also begin to learn some larger life lessons—from one another, from the example of their hardworking employees, and from Joe, the Lawrences' handsome only son who, unable to go off to fight because of his asthma, is home on the farm and engaged to Janet, a girl he plainly does not love. Huth has been compared, in the British press, to Jane Austen (no small compliment these days), and, indeed, she shares Austen's talent for setting up great romantic suspense and inventing lovably eccentric minor characters. But the war adds all kinds of unexpected twists to this story, making the course of true love follow a more circuitous route than even Austen could have plotted. Stella, Ag, and Prue bloom into distinctive, complex characters, and the question of their eventual happiness seems more pressing every day they spend on the farm. The answers, when they come, are both surprising and right. If the ending seems a bit of a letdown, with too many events and years compressed into too few paragraphs, it's only because we, like the land girls themselves, would have been content for those farm days to go on and on.

Engaging, on all fronts.

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