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A review by lory_enterenchanted
The Country Child by Alison Uttley
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
I had this on my shelf for years before I finally got around to reading it, pushed by my own Make Me Read It blog poll. And how glad I am that I did! It's a marvelous evocation of a lost form of country life, before the Great War, in Derbyshire, where Uttley grew up. She's fictionalized her experiences into a story about a little girl named Susan, but clearly they are rooted in reality, above all in the landscape and the farm that is a part of it. She beautifully describes this agricultural surrounding, with its beauty and hard work, cycling through the seasons - it reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but without the traveling around.
As an only child, with busy, preoccupied and somewhat stern parents, Susan has a very vivid inner life; the book starts and ends with her nightmarish fears in the dark wood through which she must pass every day to school, but also has lovely evocations of her imaginative connection to homely household objects as well as to the natural world. In her child-consciousness, everything is alive, everything can speak, and her sense of wonder can give us new eyes for what is still wondrous in our own everyday. I'll be keeping this and reading it again.
I had this on my shelf for years before I finally got around to reading it, pushed by my own Make Me Read It blog poll. And how glad I am that I did! It's a marvelous evocation of a lost form of country life, before the Great War, in Derbyshire, where Uttley grew up. She's fictionalized her experiences into a story about a little girl named Susan, but clearly they are rooted in reality, above all in the landscape and the farm that is a part of it. She beautifully describes this agricultural surrounding, with its beauty and hard work, cycling through the seasons - it reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but without the traveling around.
As an only child, with busy, preoccupied and somewhat stern parents, Susan has a very vivid inner life; the book starts and ends with her nightmarish fears in the dark wood through which she must pass every day to school, but also has lovely evocations of her imaginative connection to homely household objects as well as to the natural world. In her child-consciousness, everything is alive, everything can speak, and her sense of wonder can give us new eyes for what is still wondrous in our own everyday. I'll be keeping this and reading it again.