REVIEW: Homestead
Dec. 13th, 2025 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllHomestead: Rosina Lippi. Flamingo (HarperCollins) 2001
The blurb describes this as a novel, I read it more as a collection of related stories, following the women of Rosenau, an amalgamation of villages in the western Austrian alps, over most of the twentieth century, only once repeating its focus on a character, but giving us a fresh perspective of each as we read about her from a mother-in-law, a daughter, a niece’s perspective. Perhaps, as it forms a whole picture, it is a novel after all.
It starts effectively enough when a poorly addressed postcard arrives at the village, and, as Marie the postmistress says, could be written to one of seven women, who legally have the same name, even if they actually go by different names. Their community has a distinctive naming system that tells of relationships, roles and places, although the emphasis is always on the men the women belong to. One of the Annas takes it upon herself to write back. Writing is something she rarely does as a farmer’s wife, but the act itself unlocks something in her, becoming an act of intimacy to a man other than her beloved husband Peter, although an imagined version of a man, for she doesn’t know who this Anton is.
The next stories are set during the first world war, and to my shame, I didn’t remember who Austria and Italy fought for*, but it was a reminder that battles were being fought outside the muddy trenches of British imagination. Johanna is supporting her sister Angelika as Angelika’s husband Hans fights. It’s a tricky balance, to prove that she, as a single woman with a disability, can contribute as well as managing the part of the property that belongs to her. Then something happens that makes her understand her sister better, even if she cannot tell her as much. It is through women’s eyes that we see those men who return from war do so very much changed. But their lives have changed too.
The shortest and most unusual story is Angelika’s, which is really a meditation on cheesemaking as an expression of a farm wife’s character, and I didn’t quite know what to make of it.
Gradually, the Wainwright, contrasted throughout by his contemporary Bengat Alois comes into focus. Wainwright’s (daughter) Katharina, a teenager who wants out of Rosenau (in Austria in 1938) is at the heart of one of the most affecting stories. She dreams of escape, perhaps by way of one of the flashy new motor vehicles, but comes up against Nazism’s brutality threatened towards a pair of twins the women of the village cherish.
We then see how the latest war affected Mikatrin, Angelika’s daughter and Johanna’s niece. She starts the story off trying to battle her bitterness and a recalcitrant cow. We and a returning soldier (not the first man to return to Rosenau without a limb) come to learn why she is bitter. Like many of the stories, it ends with a twist.
With Olga’s story, told as a letter she writes to her prisoner-of-war husband, a supernatural element enters. As she is struggling to raise her family and deal with her deteriorating mother (who was a vibrant force at the start of the book), Olga sees the ghost of her brother, who died fighting far afield. By the end, she is still trying to work out why he returned, although in the next few stories, we learn that he appears to others in the village too.
By 1950, Katharina has married, had to, for the sake of the baby she was carrying, and is almost defying popular opinion about her by being a good housewife. Or appearing to be one. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, but one day, on her husband’s birthday, a man thought dead returns home, and Katharina sees it as a chance to do something she always wanted to. Later, we learn how that worked out for her.
Nine years later, the local schoolmistress – sister of one of the protagonists of an earlier story, niece and daughter of others, watchful of a future heroine – is hoping her godmother will tell her the truth of her birth. Unlike nearly all of the golden-haired, blue-eyed women of Rosenau, she knows the man she called ‘Data’ was not her father. She hears a story we already know, while the reader sees different perspectives of stories we thought we knew.
The last two stories are set in the 1970s, with Lili, Katharina’s daughter, not sure why she returned to be the district nurse in Rosenau, when she had a ‘brilliant career’ elsewhere. She lives with her quarrelling uncles, not her adoptive father and step-family, and tends to her aunt – still as sour-tongued as when we first met her. The fact that we know the backstories of all her relatives adds great richness to this story, where Lili learns a bit more about herself and others.
And then finally, we follow Laura, who got what she wanted (didn’t she?), another farmwife, pregnant like the sow who keeps providing their homestead with valuable piglets, trying to be a better mother than farmwife, knowing she is loved, but wishing she were cherished, as her life is hard, as so many women’s on this land has been.
As I’ve tried to express, the varying perspectives as time moves on add richness, and most stories are already rich in and of themselves. It’s a picture of communal life and inner lives, of family secrets, of the complexity of human beings. By covering over sixty years, we see the traditions and the changes over the generations, due to war and technological developments. It lightly touches on the difference between the spoken dialogue, ‘Ay-yo’ seems to mean ‘yes’, and the book language – and there would have been a stark difference between oral and written German. As a farming community, the seasons, the weather and the needs of their livestock affect everything.
The author has also published under the name Sara Donati, and that surname turns up in an interesting way. I very much appreciated that this was always from the female perspective. Love and second chances sometimes come to older women (the woman who was always ignored seen as beautiful by the lonely widower; the woman who lost nearly everything except her health and the man who saw her sister first) sometimes not, it’s not just about younger women’s impressions of the world. It’s very strong on motherhood, too, with some of the characters pregnant, some in thrall to their babies, some having definite favourites among their offspring, some having had to live through the loss of a child, be that through miscarriage, or when their child was still a child, or to greedy war. Some mothers and daughters’ relationships are a recurring battle.
*The Central Powers and the Allies respectively, according to the internet.
The blurb describes this as a novel, I read it more as a collection of related stories, following the women of Rosenau, an amalgamation of villages in the western Austrian alps, over most of the twentieth century, only once repeating its focus on a character, but giving us a fresh perspective of each as we read about her from a mother-in-law, a daughter, a niece’s perspective. Perhaps, as it forms a whole picture, it is a novel after all.
It starts effectively enough when a poorly addressed postcard arrives at the village, and, as Marie the postmistress says, could be written to one of seven women, who legally have the same name, even if they actually go by different names. Their community has a distinctive naming system that tells of relationships, roles and places, although the emphasis is always on the men the women belong to. One of the Annas takes it upon herself to write back. Writing is something she rarely does as a farmer’s wife, but the act itself unlocks something in her, becoming an act of intimacy to a man other than her beloved husband Peter, although an imagined version of a man, for she doesn’t know who this Anton is.
The next stories are set during the first world war, and to my shame, I didn’t remember who Austria and Italy fought for*, but it was a reminder that battles were being fought outside the muddy trenches of British imagination. Johanna is supporting her sister Angelika as Angelika’s husband Hans fights. It’s a tricky balance, to prove that she, as a single woman with a disability, can contribute as well as managing the part of the property that belongs to her. Then something happens that makes her understand her sister better, even if she cannot tell her as much. It is through women’s eyes that we see those men who return from war do so very much changed. But their lives have changed too.
The shortest and most unusual story is Angelika’s, which is really a meditation on cheesemaking as an expression of a farm wife’s character, and I didn’t quite know what to make of it.
Gradually, the Wainwright, contrasted throughout by his contemporary Bengat Alois comes into focus. Wainwright’s (daughter) Katharina, a teenager who wants out of Rosenau (in Austria in 1938) is at the heart of one of the most affecting stories. She dreams of escape, perhaps by way of one of the flashy new motor vehicles, but comes up against Nazism’s brutality threatened towards a pair of twins the women of the village cherish.
We then see how the latest war affected Mikatrin, Angelika’s daughter and Johanna’s niece. She starts the story off trying to battle her bitterness and a recalcitrant cow. We and a returning soldier (not the first man to return to Rosenau without a limb) come to learn why she is bitter. Like many of the stories, it ends with a twist.
With Olga’s story, told as a letter she writes to her prisoner-of-war husband, a supernatural element enters. As she is struggling to raise her family and deal with her deteriorating mother (who was a vibrant force at the start of the book), Olga sees the ghost of her brother, who died fighting far afield. By the end, she is still trying to work out why he returned, although in the next few stories, we learn that he appears to others in the village too.
By 1950, Katharina has married, had to, for the sake of the baby she was carrying, and is almost defying popular opinion about her by being a good housewife. Or appearing to be one. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, but one day, on her husband’s birthday, a man thought dead returns home, and Katharina sees it as a chance to do something she always wanted to. Later, we learn how that worked out for her.
Nine years later, the local schoolmistress – sister of one of the protagonists of an earlier story, niece and daughter of others, watchful of a future heroine – is hoping her godmother will tell her the truth of her birth. Unlike nearly all of the golden-haired, blue-eyed women of Rosenau, she knows the man she called ‘Data’ was not her father. She hears a story we already know, while the reader sees different perspectives of stories we thought we knew.
The last two stories are set in the 1970s, with Lili, Katharina’s daughter, not sure why she returned to be the district nurse in Rosenau, when she had a ‘brilliant career’ elsewhere. She lives with her quarrelling uncles, not her adoptive father and step-family, and tends to her aunt – still as sour-tongued as when we first met her. The fact that we know the backstories of all her relatives adds great richness to this story, where Lili learns a bit more about herself and others.
And then finally, we follow Laura, who got what she wanted (didn’t she?), another farmwife, pregnant like the sow who keeps providing their homestead with valuable piglets, trying to be a better mother than farmwife, knowing she is loved, but wishing she were cherished, as her life is hard, as so many women’s on this land has been.
As I’ve tried to express, the varying perspectives as time moves on add richness, and most stories are already rich in and of themselves. It’s a picture of communal life and inner lives, of family secrets, of the complexity of human beings. By covering over sixty years, we see the traditions and the changes over the generations, due to war and technological developments. It lightly touches on the difference between the spoken dialogue, ‘Ay-yo’ seems to mean ‘yes’, and the book language – and there would have been a stark difference between oral and written German. As a farming community, the seasons, the weather and the needs of their livestock affect everything.
The author has also published under the name Sara Donati, and that surname turns up in an interesting way. I very much appreciated that this was always from the female perspective. Love and second chances sometimes come to older women (the woman who was always ignored seen as beautiful by the lonely widower; the woman who lost nearly everything except her health and the man who saw her sister first) sometimes not, it’s not just about younger women’s impressions of the world. It’s very strong on motherhood, too, with some of the characters pregnant, some in thrall to their babies, some having definite favourites among their offspring, some having had to live through the loss of a child, be that through miscarriage, or when their child was still a child, or to greedy war. Some mothers and daughters’ relationships are a recurring battle.
*The Central Powers and the Allies respectively, according to the internet.
