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Loading... The Beckoning Hills (1987)by Ruth Elwin Harris
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Successful landscape artist Frances Purcell, burdened with responsibility for her three younger sisters and their English country home since she was seventeen, fears her art will suffer if she marries the man she has always loved. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Her single-minded ambition to be a painter puts her at odds with others - if not her generally understanding sisters, then the family of their guardian, the Mackenzies. Mrs Mackenzie is disapproving, and while Frances becomes friends with the Mackenzies' eldest son, she and Gabriel do not always agree. (This feels like a slight understatement.)
And then war breaks out, and threatens to turn all their lives upside down.
I absolutely love this story, about growing up, a young woman's determination to remain independent and be an artist, and WWI. The entire quartet is about the ramifications of WWI on two families and their surrounding community, but The Beckoning Hills is also about Frances reconciling with her own role (or perhaps, lack thereof) during the war and the choices she's made.
"The whole world goes up in flames but never mind, Frances Purcell paints on. A bit like Nero, isn't it?"
I would say that this is my favourite (it's the one I've reread the most), but it is ultimately impossible to truly separate the four books. There is a lot of overlap between them - the first three all begin during 1910 - but although they cover some of the same events, the sisters ultimately have very different experiences of the war (experiences they do not always share with each other!) and each book focuses on different aspects of life at Hillcrest. Furthermore, these books are about relationships, characters and characters' reactions to events, rather than those events themselves. Part of what makes this quartet so wonderful is how reading them is like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together. I can't think of anything else quite like them.
The Beckoning Hills certainly stands on its own - all of them do - but the four books together paint a much bigger picture. ( )