More than Writers

Image by Dorota Kudyba from Pixabay I’ve been too tired and burned out to write anything much this past year. It's not surprising. How can the global trauma we’ve all been through NOT have affected our souls and spirits, and our desire and capacity to create? Not only have I struggled to write anything, I’ve found it hard to READ anything. I thought I would get through tons of books during lockdown. In truth, I’ve only managed to read one book all the way through, and that was a children’s classic, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1946. For those of you who’ve not read it, this is a gorgeous Gothic romance: the enchanting tale of Maria Merryweather, a feisty young Victorian orphan who together with her doting governess Miss Heliotrope and spaniel Wiggins, come under the guardianship of Maria’s cousin, Sir Benjamin Merryweather, the lord of Moonacre Manor. Maria soon learns that the mystical estate of Moonacre hides dark secret...

Ben Jeapes’ March post mentioned St Giles’ church in Oxford.  That reminded me of a favourite young adult (YA) book: Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge. After wondering what gems there were on our shelves to read or reread (while it is impossible to visit the library) I had just decided on this one when the author was recommended in the Woman Alive Facebook group. Unusually for me, I decided to analyse the book as I went along making notes after each chapter about how the story had developed, which new characters and what background information were introduced. This was back in March. I have already reviewed the book on Sue’s Trifles . In case you are particularly interested in my analysis, my notes are in the photos below. Towers in the Mist was one of the first YA books I read. It was published as a Peacock, a long gone imprint of the Penguin group. (Puffin was for children, Penguin fiction for adults, Peacock, YA and Pelican, non-fiction.) As a younger ch...