Chantemesle: A Normandy Childhood

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 château in the heart of the forest and a dessicated 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.