REVIEW: Lorna on the Land
Aug. 28th, 2007 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThis review may be even more rambling than normal. For one thing, I want to go watch the tennis match that is playing on my TV set. And for another, I am still freaked out by Googling the book title and author name and this morning's entry coming up.
Lorna on the Land by Doris Pocock, Ward Lock, 1946.
Despite the title, this story is about 'the group of young things at Sedge Fen Farm' in the months leading up to the second world war. Lorna Treherne is known as 'Dux' at Morecombe School, where she is school captain. As she and the other sixth formers consider their future, for most of them will leave school at the close of the summer term of '38-'39, they are influenced by the call to sign up for some form of national service, although no-one except Lorna takes the possibility of war too seriously. They believe that the threat has been averted and boarding school life is very consuming. But Lorna's friend Myra, more commonly known as Nibbs, signs up to serve in the Women's Land Army too, although she has a far more romantic idea of what it will entail than clear-sighted Lorna, who knows the work will involve waking up on a frosty cold morning to rake muck.
After being introduced to these two girls, we move to Sedge Fen Farm, where Farmer Brode is considering taking on Land Girls for training. He has two sons, one, Ted, who is a born farmer, but also a wannabe soldier and Andrew, four years younger and very much still a boy. He is also a cuckoo as far as his father is concerned, more interested in books than the hard graft of farming. He wants to stay on in education when his father's instinct is that it is time for him to leave and train as a farmer. His father doesn't understand what's driving this son, and while he is right about some of Andrew's faults, naivete and egoism mainly, he is not right about the importance of book learning to the national weal.
Anyhow, it is no surprise that Lorna and Nibbs are posted to the same village and eventually to this farm. The date of that training is the end of August 1939...
The date of publication is 1946, I don't know when the book was written, but it makes the most of the date in which it is set, and convinces as an immediate depiction of the attitudes of the time towards war and national duty, especially among a generation that, as we are reminded in the book, was born after the Great War. The treatment of why they are going to war seems vague from the perspective of sixty years plus on, but I suppose there's more authenticity to not knowing the whole story, to the girls not always heeding the wireless or the newspaper stories. In the secondary character of 'LouLou', a Czech refugee, we get a flavour of it. He is an extremely talented musician who lost his family, home and prospects and is working on the land. The suggestion is that his family was targeted because his father was a dissident, so Nazism is couched as a threat to liberty in general and of the British Isles.
Lorna and Nibbs find that they are sharing a house with a disparate set of girls, who have very different backgrounds and outlooks to the sheltered upper class 'ladies'. Lorna is more suited by temprament to shake down and make friends. Nibbs - dealing with the arduousness of real physical labour that's distasteful to her as well as loud, lively lasses' fondness for low culture (!) is less able to cope. There is then, some examination of class, though class and upbringing are shown as not as important as personality and physicality in making the volunteers able to do their work well. One of these 'girls' is the slightly older Poll (another nickname), a jolly, capable nursemaid who is allocated to Sedge Fen with Lorna and Nibbs, where she and Ted hit it off quickly, a touching example of the classic wartime romance.
There are other girl-boy pairings, although most are platonic. Lorna, once a captain, always a captain, takes on Andrew's cause, and slowly discovers that this square peg in a round hole has a good deal of potential. Nibbs takes up LouLou's part when she hears his story and music. There is a not-quite romance for Lorna when she rescues an airman from a crashed plane (I very much liked the brief speculative paragraph of how a real romance between them would be, wrought by the realities of war) although it mainly lies in Nibbs' imagination. But it is the girls' friendship, or Lorna's toleration for Nibbs's claim on her (?), and how they take (or not) to being Land Girls that is the focus of the tale. Lorna embodies the ideal of a Land Girl, with a deep love of her land and the outdoor life, and no illusions about it either. It is significant that her real name is used for her, not her nickname mostly, while Nibbs is Nibbs, not Myra (and she even uses her second name, Evangeline, at times). She is still a child - both Lorna and Polly mollycoddle her. The story ends with her not passing her training, while the other two return to Sedge Fen farm: one to her sweetheart's family, the other to her beloved land. Nibbs is left to think that at least she did not give up, though I didn't particularly see the nobility of putting yourself up for something that you were clearly unfit for and making more work for others, and being too stubborn to admit your mistake.
This book is on a list of books about the Women's Land Army (some girls own, I've read 'Jill on the Land', some not and some non-fic) here (see also this wider list of books featuring women doing other war work). Not contained on this list is A Strange Enchantment by Mabel Esther Allan (who did serve in the land army during world war. I was convinced that I had read another book about a land girl (she spends more time solving mysteries than farm work and befriends a young man called Dick??? ETA: This is Toby at Tibbs Cross.) At the farm, the girls get a flavour of all kinds of farm work, although it's mainly used as colourful background, given the way that time passes. As I said, the focus is on the girls in training and their acquaintances and how the coming war affects and will affect their youth.
Lorna on the Land by Doris Pocock, Ward Lock, 1946.
Despite the title, this story is about 'the group of young things at Sedge Fen Farm' in the months leading up to the second world war. Lorna Treherne is known as 'Dux' at Morecombe School, where she is school captain. As she and the other sixth formers consider their future, for most of them will leave school at the close of the summer term of '38-'39, they are influenced by the call to sign up for some form of national service, although no-one except Lorna takes the possibility of war too seriously. They believe that the threat has been averted and boarding school life is very consuming. But Lorna's friend Myra, more commonly known as Nibbs, signs up to serve in the Women's Land Army too, although she has a far more romantic idea of what it will entail than clear-sighted Lorna, who knows the work will involve waking up on a frosty cold morning to rake muck.
After being introduced to these two girls, we move to Sedge Fen Farm, where Farmer Brode is considering taking on Land Girls for training. He has two sons, one, Ted, who is a born farmer, but also a wannabe soldier and Andrew, four years younger and very much still a boy. He is also a cuckoo as far as his father is concerned, more interested in books than the hard graft of farming. He wants to stay on in education when his father's instinct is that it is time for him to leave and train as a farmer. His father doesn't understand what's driving this son, and while he is right about some of Andrew's faults, naivete and egoism mainly, he is not right about the importance of book learning to the national weal.
Anyhow, it is no surprise that Lorna and Nibbs are posted to the same village and eventually to this farm. The date of that training is the end of August 1939...
The date of publication is 1946, I don't know when the book was written, but it makes the most of the date in which it is set, and convinces as an immediate depiction of the attitudes of the time towards war and national duty, especially among a generation that, as we are reminded in the book, was born after the Great War. The treatment of why they are going to war seems vague from the perspective of sixty years plus on, but I suppose there's more authenticity to not knowing the whole story, to the girls not always heeding the wireless or the newspaper stories. In the secondary character of 'LouLou', a Czech refugee, we get a flavour of it. He is an extremely talented musician who lost his family, home and prospects and is working on the land. The suggestion is that his family was targeted because his father was a dissident, so Nazism is couched as a threat to liberty in general and of the British Isles.
Lorna and Nibbs find that they are sharing a house with a disparate set of girls, who have very different backgrounds and outlooks to the sheltered upper class 'ladies'. Lorna is more suited by temprament to shake down and make friends. Nibbs - dealing with the arduousness of real physical labour that's distasteful to her as well as loud, lively lasses' fondness for low culture (!) is less able to cope. There is then, some examination of class, though class and upbringing are shown as not as important as personality and physicality in making the volunteers able to do their work well. One of these 'girls' is the slightly older Poll (another nickname), a jolly, capable nursemaid who is allocated to Sedge Fen with Lorna and Nibbs, where she and Ted hit it off quickly, a touching example of the classic wartime romance.
There are other girl-boy pairings, although most are platonic. Lorna, once a captain, always a captain, takes on Andrew's cause, and slowly discovers that this square peg in a round hole has a good deal of potential. Nibbs takes up LouLou's part when she hears his story and music. There is a not-quite romance for Lorna when she rescues an airman from a crashed plane (I very much liked the brief speculative paragraph of how a real romance between them would be, wrought by the realities of war) although it mainly lies in Nibbs' imagination. But it is the girls' friendship, or Lorna's toleration for Nibbs's claim on her (?), and how they take (or not) to being Land Girls that is the focus of the tale. Lorna embodies the ideal of a Land Girl, with a deep love of her land and the outdoor life, and no illusions about it either. It is significant that her real name is used for her, not her nickname mostly, while Nibbs is Nibbs, not Myra (and she even uses her second name, Evangeline, at times). She is still a child - both Lorna and Polly mollycoddle her. The story ends with her not passing her training, while the other two return to Sedge Fen farm: one to her sweetheart's family, the other to her beloved land. Nibbs is left to think that at least she did not give up, though I didn't particularly see the nobility of putting yourself up for something that you were clearly unfit for and making more work for others, and being too stubborn to admit your mistake.
This book is on a list of books about the Women's Land Army (some girls own, I've read 'Jill on the Land', some not and some non-fic) here (see also this wider list of books featuring women doing other war work). Not contained on this list is A Strange Enchantment by Mabel Esther Allan (who did serve in the land army during world war. I was convinced that I had read another book about a land girl (she spends more time solving mysteries than farm work and befriends a young man called Dick??? ETA: This is Toby at Tibbs Cross.) At the farm, the girls get a flavour of all kinds of farm work, although it's mainly used as colourful background, given the way that time passes. As I said, the focus is on the girls in training and their acquaintances and how the coming war affects and will affect their youth.
