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mollyringle 's review for:
A Girl of the Limberlost
by Gene Stratton-Porter
My grandmother, who was from Indiana, gave me this book when I was a kid, and I read it then. I remembered it was about a girl in old-timey Indiana who collected moths and butterflies, and it was kind of cool that way. So when I saw a copy in a used bookstore (I don't know what ever happened to the copy Grandma gave me), I bought it to re-read it.
I remembered more details as I re-read them and they came back to life in my mind, which indicates this book must have made a deeper groove in my brain than I had realized. It's old-fashioned in its moralistic or prim or over-sentimental attitudes sometimes, but you know, it's still pretty cool. I read it all the way to the end, and these days I'm merciless about quitting a book somewhere in the middle if it fails to grab me sufficiently.
Our teenage heroine is Elnora Comstock--ouch, there's a clunker of a pioneer name for you--and I found it impossible not to like her, even though she's rather too perfect to be real most of the time. Her mom Kate, now, there was an interesting character: even in her early years of being cold and dour (you think you know how to be a bitter pioneer woman? KATE COMSTOCK WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO BE A BITTER PIONEER WOMAN), she shows flashes of intriguing depth and wit, and eventually comes around to happiness and warmth.
The moths! The butterflies! The nature! That's the best part, really. Okay, yes, from a modern perspective, it's disconcerting to see the scientific viewpoint being "Let's capture these moths, kill them with a dunk in gasoline, and pin them to boards, because we love them." But hey, conservation wasn't quite where it is now--and that's too bad, because as far as I can tell from the internet, the Limberlost Swamp is now gone, paved over with roads like most other wetlands, and I imagine many of those gorgeous moths are gone too. So the book's message of spending time in nature in order to become smarter, calmer, happier, and more in touch with reality is a worthwhile one.
I'm usually way into the romance, but this one was kind of a flop. OBVIOUSLY Philip was going to choose Elnora over the ridiculously, two-dimensionally horrible, shallow Edith (really, she starts out so selfish and evil that it's like she walked out of an Ayn Rand novel--but then, even she gets transformed by Elnora's unstoppable goodness by the end). So there was no real tension, just a lot of pointless chasing and waiting and moping and virtuously not kissing before the happy reunion.
Still: pretty moths! Strangely delicious-sounding homemade farm snacks! Glimpse of American high school circa 1900! Cool stuff for the most part.
I remembered more details as I re-read them and they came back to life in my mind, which indicates this book must have made a deeper groove in my brain than I had realized. It's old-fashioned in its moralistic or prim or over-sentimental attitudes sometimes, but you know, it's still pretty cool. I read it all the way to the end, and these days I'm merciless about quitting a book somewhere in the middle if it fails to grab me sufficiently.
Our teenage heroine is Elnora Comstock--ouch, there's a clunker of a pioneer name for you--and I found it impossible not to like her, even though she's rather too perfect to be real most of the time. Her mom Kate, now, there was an interesting character: even in her early years of being cold and dour (you think you know how to be a bitter pioneer woman? KATE COMSTOCK WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO BE A BITTER PIONEER WOMAN), she shows flashes of intriguing depth and wit, and eventually comes around to happiness and warmth.
The moths! The butterflies! The nature! That's the best part, really. Okay, yes, from a modern perspective, it's disconcerting to see the scientific viewpoint being "Let's capture these moths, kill them with a dunk in gasoline, and pin them to boards, because we love them." But hey, conservation wasn't quite where it is now--and that's too bad, because as far as I can tell from the internet, the Limberlost Swamp is now gone, paved over with roads like most other wetlands, and I imagine many of those gorgeous moths are gone too. So the book's message of spending time in nature in order to become smarter, calmer, happier, and more in touch with reality is a worthwhile one.
I'm usually way into the romance, but this one was kind of a flop. OBVIOUSLY Philip was going to choose Elnora over the ridiculously, two-dimensionally horrible, shallow Edith (really, she starts out so selfish and evil that it's like she walked out of an Ayn Rand novel--but then, even she gets transformed by Elnora's unstoppable goodness by the end). So there was no real tension, just a lot of pointless chasing and waiting and moping and virtuously not kissing before the happy reunion.
Still: pretty moths! Strangely delicious-sounding homemade farm snacks! Glimpse of American high school circa 1900! Cool stuff for the most part.