This book completely shocked me, and I can see why so many fans of Flambards hate it. I wanted to throw it across the room several times. But it rewards reading and thinking about it, and why Peyton wrote it, and why people hate it so much.

Basically, Peyton ended the trilogy with Christina's story wrapped up like a chocolate box, she's got Flambards, she's got Dick (sweet, loyal, loving Dick, who has always cared for her since he first met her) and everyone gets to ride off into the sunset. And then ten years later she came back and wrote what I can only describe as the anti-fix-it fic, painfully deconstructing all the reasons her happy ending would never work with her actual characters, and heaping misery upon misery to Dick/Christina until they tear each other apart.

And the two big things that drive all of this are Class, and Mark. If, like me, you are very unimpressed by both of them, you will hate watching them take down Dick and Chrstina's happy ever after.

Class! Dick wanted Christina. But he didn't actually want to be master of Flambards. The servants hate him for being just another servant, raised above his station. All the social life of the gentry is closed to him, no-one invites him and Christina around for dinner because they disapprove of the marriage. People gossip, people tut, Dick wants to give Christina everything but is like a fish out of water trying to live in the world she lives in. And not only with class, she has travelled and been independant and adventurous, and Dick's imaginings of what his wife will be and what she will do make a box too small for Christina to fit in.

Mark! Uncle Russell in book 1 is 100% the bad guy. He's cruel, irrational, self obsessed, makes Will so unhappy he cripples himself, sells Sweetbriar to the hounds, burns Will's books on aeroplanes... we all hate Uncle Russell. And Mark is drawn as the chip off the old block, shallow, obsessed with hunting, casually cruel and able to trample over other people's feelings without even noticing. So the fact that the series gets rewritten to 'Christina finally realises it was Mark she has loved all along' is just... really jarring. Readers who have loved Will and loved Dick, and seen Mark be unbearably cruel to them and their families (he is literally the reason Christina loses the baby!) will not enjoy their heroine messing everything up with Dick and falling head over heels in love with Mark.

But does it make sense? Peyton is a skilled author and an excellent observer of people, and her cynical 'Dick cannot make Christina happy' is miserable but does ring true. Mark is as much a product of Uncle Russell's torture as the rest of them are. And Christina and Mark are cut from the same cloth, their love of adventure, hard riding, fast cars and parties. And there is something in Mark, that spark of 'if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same'...

Ugh, I don't know. I think I preferred the end of book 3 to the end of book 4. But book 4 really made me think! ( )

Gee, I really hated this book. It's everything I don't want to read- melodramatic romance with Mary Sue and all the men in the world who can't live without her. Gack. And yes, I read the whole damned thing but only because I had no other book to hand and I was in bed and it was too cold to get up and get a decent book. I would have been much happier if I'd stopped after the first book in this series. ( )

Protagonist: Christina Wright
Setting: Flambards, a country estate in Essex, England at the end of World War I
Series: #4

Flambards Divided is the last installment of a popular British series. I came to the books through the wonderful series that Granada Television filmed in 1978. It was shown on PBS here in the US in 1980. When reading the credits, I saw the books mentioned, and I had to get them. I think it was Flambards that began my interest in the World War I era, so it turned out to be an expensive series to watch. It combines my love, not only of that period of history, but also of country houses, early aviation and horses.

Widowed a year earlier, Christina has bought the Flambards estate and has worked hard to bring it back to life. She scandalizes the neighborhood by marrying Dick Wright, formerly employed there as a stable boy. There's trouble in paradise because Dick simply will not ingratiate himself with the local gentry who treated him so shabbily years before. Christina becomes rather tired of being stuck at Flambards playing the dutiful wife who can only watch the children, sew, and make sure her man is fed. Her first marriage had been full of adventure and a sense of independence.

Into this uneasiness comes Mark Russell, brother of Christina's deceased husband--a man who's been in love with her for a long time and just so happens to be married to Christina's best friend. All the makings of a potboiler, I know, but it all works because these characters have become friends over 25 years. I don't think Christina will be any happier with her decision at the end, but it wasn't mine to choose. This was an enjoyable comfort read. ( )

I was quite worried that I wouldn't enjoy this because I'd heard lots of people say that Peyton shouldn't have added a fourth to the trilogy but I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting look at the problems of inter-class marriage in the 1950s. Oddly I can't remember how this book finished, even though it's only a couple of weeks since I read it. ( )