Reviews - Le secret de Moonacre

Le secret de Moonacre by Elizabeth Goudge

408 reviews for:

I wanted to like this book. It has the whimsical storyline that I usually love, but the plot was so uneventful I had a hard time finishing. It is almost sickly sweet and if anything bad happens, it’s resolved in a paragraph or two. Maria does everything too perfectly and never makes a mistake. Every task she sets out to accomplish comes easily to her. The whimsy was the only thing that redeemed this for me. Although I will say I would have been obsessed with this if I read it when I was 10.

b00kh0arder's review against another edition

5.0

When her father dies, orphaned Maria Merryweather, along with her loyal & loving governess Miss Heliotrope, and vain spaniel Wiggins, is taken off to a valley in the West Country to live at Moonacre Manor, the home of her only living relative, Sir Benjamin Merryweather, who she has never met. The valley is a beautiful place, but its apparent serenity is not allit seems, and old wrongs will have to be righted if everyne is to live happily. As this is a Folio edition, the book is, obviously, physically gorgeous- solidly made, with beautiful illustrations by Debra MacFarlane & an introduction by writer and columnist Jane Shilling.
The story itself is a sweet one. Yes, there are things that wouldn't/don't really fly today, but to that I say you have to remember that this is a story set in the 1840s written by someone in the 1940s, and if that every piece of art had to conform to the cultural and social mores of each era it's viewed in, we wouldn't have any art that lasts longer than 5 minutes, and we certainly wouldn't have any classics.
It does sometimes veer dangerously into the bucolic and overly twee, but the prose keeps it just on the right side of both.

carriedoodledoo's review against another edition

4.0

A lovely fairy-tale of a children's novel. I won't say anything more about it, except that when I buy my own copy I won't get the edition with this cover art because it spoils the revelation that the little white horse is a unicorn. It's adorable and gives you the nostalgic fuzzies. Excuse me now I'm going to go plant some pink geraniums...