The Flight of the Maidens Review

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(More customer reviews)Witty, moving, suspenseful,historically fascinating, true to the hearts and minds of young women about to be launched from home, lyrical, full of eccentric characters and settings. Gardam has the gift of writing delightfully funny fiction which is at the same time sensitive to the subtle emotional life of her characters. Among other things, this is an incisive picture of friendship. Best of all, she manages to make kindness triumph over all sorts of adversity, from madness to losses from war and the Holocaust to confusion in romantic relationships.
This novel brought me deep happiness.

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This delightful novel describes the post-war summer of 1946 - and follows the growing-up of three young women in the months between leaving school and taking up their scholarships at university. Una Vane, whose widowed mother runs a hairdressing salon in her front room ('Maison Vane Glory - Where Permanent Waves are Permanent'), goes bicycling with Ray, the boy who delivers the fish and milk. Hetty Fallowes struggles to become independent of her possessive, loving, tactless mother. And Lieselotte Klein, who had arrived in 1939 on a train from Hamburg, uncovers tragedy in the past and magic in the present. Rooted in the north of England, THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS is peopled with extraordinary characters, who are evoked with all the humour, compassion and eye for detail that mark Jane Gardam as one of Britain's most gifted and original novelists.

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