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A review by natalie_and_company
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
5.0
Having never read the books or seen any of the movies, I had no expectations going into it. So much so that I was bored for the first few chapters, there were no stakes to be found and it was causing me to doze off. Then, you meet Mr. Toad in the fifth chapter and I had the thought, "may this Toad is the stakes I have been looking for." And boy, I could not have been more correct.
Toad was the locomotive of the lazy train through the woods. Yet, his pervasiveness as a plot device did not transfer to his pervasiveness as a character. He did not dominate the book. After having now also watched the movie, He definitely dominates the movie. He is even animated differently than the rest of the animals in the 1995 version. In the book, each character is given so much time to exist in their own space. It creates a beautiful juxtaposition between the plot that Toad keeps pushing forward and the permanent serenity that exists within nature, no matter what else is going on around, inside, over, or under it.
To me, the joy that exists in Kenneth Grahame's writing about nature in "The Wind in the Willows" is more akin and familiar to real nature as I have experienced it, than anything I've ever read by Hemingway or Whitman. The serious gravity that nature writers are known for is not the nature I seem to experience on a day to day. So when I saw the nature that I do experience, so pleasantly reflected in this book it was a breath of fresh air, a dive into a cold river on a summer's day.
Toad was the locomotive of the lazy train through the woods. Yet, his pervasiveness as a plot device did not transfer to his pervasiveness as a character. He did not dominate the book. After having now also watched the movie, He definitely dominates the movie. He is even animated differently than the rest of the animals in the 1995 version. In the book, each character is given so much time to exist in their own space. It creates a beautiful juxtaposition between the plot that Toad keeps pushing forward and the permanent serenity that exists within nature, no matter what else is going on around, inside, over, or under it.
To me, the joy that exists in Kenneth Grahame's writing about nature in "The Wind in the Willows" is more akin and familiar to real nature as I have experienced it, than anything I've ever read by Hemingway or Whitman. The serious gravity that nature writers are known for is not the nature I seem to experience on a day to day. So when I saw the nature that I do experience, so pleasantly reflected in this book it was a breath of fresh air, a dive into a cold river on a summer's day.