Chantemesle
 Robin Fedden
 A Normandy Childhood

 Pages: 112
 Format: Paperback
 ISBN: 0 907871 92 5

 Area of interest: France
 Genre:  Autobiography, British Abroad

 Date of first publication: 1964
 Eland publication date: January 1, 2002
 Price: £7.99

     

Chantemesle is a lyrical evocation of growing up on the banks of the Seine. In this minutely observed landscape, where even the wind is a character in its own right, we meet blind Battouflet, the singing hermit of the hillside, solemn Clotilde, who lives in a chateau in the heart of the forest and a desiccated and disturbing spinster, Mlle. Firman.

Robin Fedden writes with preternatural clarity, taking the reader with him into a long-forgotten yet echoingly familiar world. When Fedden finds himself expelled from this realm by his emerging sexuality, he leaves us reeling with nostalgia for that timeless sense of the present that is the magic of childhood.