New Leaf September 2019 Discussion • The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

[CRussel]

I have to disagree, Bookpossum. While yes, that is an early quote, it is completely unrelated to his behaviour as a 13 year old lout and bully. At no point that I can recall in the entire book does he make any apology for that 13 year old. Much less any hint in the early pages that perhaps he has learned better. Yes, he's learned that others love the Lake District. But not that others might find his behaviour as a 13 year old unacceptable.

[Bookpossum]

Clearly he needs to say it in so many words to convince you Charlie. For me, he was telling us what he was like then, and why. He knows perfectly well that the behaviour of the tribe to which he was trying to belong - it wasn't just him after all - was unacceptable.

Probably just something about which we need to agree to disagree!

[Bookworm_Girl]

I wouldn’t like to know my 13 year old self. I was pretty self-absorbed and succumbed to peer pressure and was not as nice to others as I grew up to be. And, I was still a really nice and respectful kid in general! I think the majority of people have evolved since their teenage years and that doesn’t need to be explicitly spelled out. He obviously went on to appreciate learning, get a university degree and have jobs outside the farm, and do multiple jobs at the same time as farming. Those outside experiences, I think, helped him to appreciate his farming way of life even more.

It’s a memoir. It’s his perspective. I thought he was being honest about his attitudes at different stages of his life. I thought the honesty actually made it more relatable. I have always lived in large urban areas. My husband grew up in a very small town that mostly revolves around farming or manufacturing jobs. The stories he tells about the attitudes of locals are astounding to me, but they are real and they remind me of some of the attitudes in this book about village life. There are people who grow up and never leave that county and don’t want to. He had friends who couldn’t understand why he wanted a university degree and left town and never came back. It’s just very different from what I experienced.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Victoria

Bookworm_Girl! I spent a lot of time with my grandmother in her kitchen as too. We were very close, so I treasure those memories. She was famous for her baking, which amazes me now when I think that she just had an old wood stove and a hand pump to the well for water. I wish now that I’d learned more from her. .

I am glad that my mother learned many recipes from my grandma and has passed them down to me! I can remember my parents buying her a microwave in the 80s and how revolutionary it was to her.

[issybird]

Victoria, our fathers shared a birthday! Mine would have been 91 on Sunday. But he grew up in New York City; no farmer boy he.

I'm just going to quote one bit of the discussion about Rebanks as a schoolboy as a springboard for my own thoughts:

Originally Posted by gmw

The 13yo I can (now that I'm well past school age) forgive. I am much less forgiving of a 40yo trying to blame his behaviour on the teachers. Maybe it was an awful school, but I'm not about to take the word of a 13yo thug, nor a 40yo adult who won't allow that at least some of the teachers might have meant well even if his 13yo self couldn't see it.

Rebanks mostly expresses his own tunnel vision, it seems to me. It's a style, but if we're to excuse him by looking outside, then we're open to considering other points of view as well. gmw made an excellent point about educating those who wouldn't be able to make a living on the family farm. How about the teachers themselves? Did they come from elsewhere? Some, perhaps, but I would imagine most of them had local origins. Either they weren't as bad as Rebanks claims, or they were bitter about their own experiences and lack of alternatives.

Certainly all the women seem ground down. His mother had a year at university, so why marry a semi-illiterate sheep farmer? And his adored grandfather was clearly another who oppressed his wife. (Did anyone else wonder what happened to the girl he impregnated?) And I think the attitude carried forward to the author as with much else. This irritated me:

Some farmers' wives still compete with one another to put on the best clipping-time tead (no one has the heart to tell them that being full of cakes and scones is not great when you have to bend double all afternoon).

Oh, really? There's so much wrong with this attitude on the author's part that I could write paragraphs about it.

I'm another in the mixed feelings camp. I didn't mind Rebanks's general yobbishness. (Although did anyone else cringe early on when he took a swig from the milk carton? That had to be deliberate in establishing his character.) I found the descriptions of the specifics of sheep farming quite fascinating. But really, he's a dreadful writer. I expect much more from a memoir, especially one with a rural setting. Ultimately this was polemic, the sense that he was harranguing us.

I also thought that much was exaggerated to the point of outright lies, to make a point. Seriously, they learned about Native Americans in his school to the exclusion of local history? Don't buy it.

His attitude toward his own education evidences a kind of two-faced superiority, as others have noted. He despises it on the one hand, but he also makes sure that we know he could pass the exams without even breathing hard once he felt like it, that he ran circles around his interviewers, and that Oxford was a sideline to his real life on the weekends at home. And, typically, his girlfriend supports him while he's doing all this.

One passing thought I had, on the economics of sheep farming, is that for all he dislikes outlanders, who are the end market for the meat? Lamb in the market here is astronomically priced. I have no idea how much it costs in England and maybe it's cheaper as closer to the source (here, it's either locally grown or imported from New Zealand), but I can't imagine it's priced exactly on par with ground chuck, or mince in British terms.

I tend to like this kind of thing and it was an easy and interesting read, but I think I read it rapidly because the prose was so stultifying. I usually take more copious notes on book club selections, but this time I pretty much bombed through. A decent editor could have helped a lot.

[gmw]

This memoir may well be honest (although I am not fully convinced of that), but that doesn't make it appealing to me. If we were in the P&R forum I could name several people whose memoirs I would fully expect to make me angry, I just didn't expect it in this case. I guess that, knowing how conservative farmers can be, I should not have been surprised, but I can't help wishing it was otherwise because I was expecting better.

I'm inclined to do a Jane Bennett* and try to make them all seem good and agreeable, so:

James Rebanks wrote the book this way so that his neighbours won't react badly. Probably some of his neighbours were there with him at 13 years old, pushing around others and breaking things, and these days they might even brag about it down the pub; so to apologise in writing would send the signal that he disapproves of his neighbours, and that won't do. (Offered tongue-in-cheek, but something along these lines may well have influenced his writing.)

But, in the Jane Bennett spirit of this interpretation, James has underestimated his neighbours; they might brag about their childhood exploits but with abashed smiles, so the author really doesn't need to try and hide his better nature.


* I'm guessing Pride and Prejudice sprang to mind because Lizzy was supposed to go on a tour of the Lakes ... at least I can't think why else it would occur to me ... unless I am seeing something of Mr Wickham in our Mr Rebanks.

[issybird]

I don't mind what he said as much as I mind how he said it. Part of it is the execrable prose and part of it is the feeling he can't be trusted.

What this has in common with last month's selection is that I think they'd both read better in bits. I think Charlie observed that it reads like blog posts strung together, and it would be better as blog posts.

I'm not saying there's no artistry at all; as someone, I can't remember who, said, the use of the seasons was well done, although I'll note that it's a tried-and-true method of cranking out a memoir. But I can't really cavil about tat when it's a memoir about farming!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

* I'm guessing Pride and Prejudice sprang to mind because Lizzy was supposed to go on a tour of the Lakes ... at least I can't think why else it would occur to me ... unless I am seeing something of Mr Wickham in our Mr Rebanks.

Hah! And now I'm thinking of other works with a Lake District setting (although Lizzy, luckily for her, didn't make it that far). Swallow and Amazons, which I loved as a kid. And Nella Last's memoirs; she lived in Barrow, close enough to escape on outings to Coniston Water.

[astrangerhere]

I'm a little late, even though this was my nomination, due to a crisis at work. I won't attempt in a single post to address all the very thoughtful comments, but I would say this:

I would be terrified to take a peek at my 13 year old self. I was stagnating in a parochial school, just figuring out how to live in a closet, and had severe anger problems as a result. I did what I had to do to survive in that environment, but I would not be proud of most of it now.

I was lucky enough to escape into books outside of the required reading, which did not seem to be so readily available to Rebanks in his youth.

While I am not generally a fan of the white male son vs. father narrative (because it has been done a million times), this one did strike me. It is good to see it come full circle.

I appreciated too the almost umbilical connection of the man and his animals. You see it in his sheep and his dog Floss. I still follow him on Twitter and Instagram (where he posts almost all photos and conservation information) and have seen Floss have another littler of puppies and be retired from fieldwork. I suspect he will mourn as much on the day that dog dies as he did when his father did.

I read this and H is for Hawk in the same year, and both were in my top 10, though Macdonald ended up higher in the list. I feel like Rebanks' book is a photo album where Hawk is more a snapshot. I loved both for what they were.

[issybird]

Fair point about any of our 13-year old selves!

I didn't mind his description of his thuggishness myself, but if I were going to object to it, it would be on the basis of Rebanks pointing his finger only at the teachers, when it would seem to me there were a lot of factors in play. Tension at home, where the barely literate father asserted his authority over his educated wife, and where literacy wasn't valued. One has to infer that the reason his mother didn't bring up her kids to love books was that she wasn't allowed to, or because she was too ground down to make the effort. Resentful teachers, who perhaps had little choice in the occupations open to them; it might be lousy to be their students, but that goes both ways, especially if you didn't want to be in a classroom teaching them, either. I think Rebanks could have been more generous in assessing the common misery of everyone in a failing economic environment. It wasn't the teachers; it was everything. Rebanks is too apologetic for the male hegemony and not especially sympathetic to the women's plights.

I'll say it; I wonder who's gonna get the farm when he kicks? Not the girls.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'll say it; I wonder who's gonna get the farm when he kicks? Not the girls.

His older girl is already quite serious about becoming a veterinarian. She started secondary school this week (he posted proud dad photos). She has been birthing sheep on the farm since she was 4 and is able to do it without any assistance. His middle girl loves to paint and cook like her mother, and also loves school. His son, who I think is just now 3, is the likely candidate. He loves farm toys, the dogs and the sheep. However, all three children had very expensive sheep bought for them to start their own flocks should they want them one day.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I read an interview that said his main hope is for the farm to continue in the next generation whether through his son or his daughters. In the books there is a quote where he says now my children (plural) follow my father around the farm and my father teaches my children (plural) his traditions and values and it’s great to see that come full circle. He doesn’t isolate these thoughts to his son only. I enjoyed the story about his youngest daughter’s first lambing on her own. I thought he was proud of her and encouraged her to keep going even when she was scared to continue. I don’t think he thinks only men can be farmers. I don’t think he thinks women should be confined to the farmhouse. For example he looks up to Jean Wilson, known locally as the Queen of the Herdwicks, and wants to learn from her and also wants her approval.

[CRussel]

I would agree with you on this, Bookworm_Girl. While there are certainly places in the book where he demonstrates a rather male-centric view, the overall impression I got was that a shepherd is a shepherd, and that it isn't a gender-specific noun.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I appreciated too the almost umbilical connection of the man and his animals. You see it in his sheep and his dog Floss. I still follow him on Twitter and Instagram (where he posts almost all photos and conservation information) and have seen Floss have another littler of puppies and be retired from fieldwork. I suspect he will mourn as much on the day that dog dies as he did when his father did.

Have you followed his wife’s Instagram too? It’s interesting how they focus on different but complementary themes. His feed is as you note is about the connection between man and the land and animals, some proud dad photos of his kids, and his book love. Her feed is more about family life and the interaction of people with people. Also you noted one of the daughters likes baking with mom. Please, can I be invited to tea? Their cake creations on her feed look delicious!

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I read an interview that said his main hope is for the farm to continue in the next generation whether through his son or his daughters. In the books there is a quote where he says now my children (plural) follow my father around the farm and my father teaches my children (plural) his traditions and values and it’s great to see that come full circle. He doesn’t isolate these thoughts to his son only. I enjoyed the story about his youngest daughter’s first lambing on her own. I thought he was proud of her and encouraged her to keep going even when she was scared to continue. I don’t think he thinks only men can be farmers. I don’t think he thinks women should be confined to the farmhouse. For example he looks up to Jean Wilson, known locally as the Queen of the Herdwicks, and wants to learn from her and also wants her approval.

He also wrote approvingly of Beatrix Heelis (Potter) and her work. I certainly had the impression that he is proud of all three of his children, and doesn’t see his daughters as in any way less important than his son.