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- Paperback 666 pages (March 1993)
- Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks
- ISBN: 0751506397
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The
Flowers of the Field
This was my first full-length published novel,
so it occupies a special place in my affections. We’d just
moved out of London to a small village in Cambridgeshire. I was
29 years old, an impecunious young wife and mother, writing short
stories when I could. The two novels I’d written had failed
to find a publisher. The idea of a first world war novel with a
women’s angle was not mine, but that of Futura editor Rosie
de Courcy. But once suggested to me it was a case of ‘light the blue touch paper and
retire’ – my imagination caught fire and I was away,
first with a 20-page synopsis from which the book was commissioned,
then the 666 pages of the book itself. It’s the story of
three women – sisters Thea and Dulcie Tennant and their family’s
maid, Primmy Dilkes – and how their lives are changed by
the tumultuous events of the Great War. It’s a huge canvas,
but I tried to keep the action and characters intimate and intense
wherever I could. Readers both female and male (some of whom were
actually there) have been kind enough to say that the battle scenes
feel authentic, and that the story packs a big emotional punch – something
I always aim for.
The title is a quotation from the Book of Common Prayer, but
it also carries an echo of the lament ‘Flowers of the
Forest’, and of the Flanders poppy.
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