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A review by ygraines
The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier
3.0
"janet - joseph - christopher - jennifer, all bound together in some strange and thwarted love for one another, handing down this strain of restlessness and suffering, this intolerable longing for beauty and freedom; all searching for the nameless things, the untrodden ways, but finding peace only in plyn and in each other; each one torn apart from his beloved by the physical separation of death, yet remaining part of them for ever, bound by countless links that none could break, uniting in one another the living presence of a wise and loving spirit."
there were moments of emotional resonance in the loving spirit, and a sense of devotion to place that lent power to the sense of homecoming in jennifer's final return to plyn, but i couldn't help feeling that it was a little thin in places; the four central characters, echoing each other as they do, depended on each other for dimension, and by the time the narrative reached the third and fourth generations, chris and jenny, the strain of balancing past and present felt very obvious to me, and neither character had much room to breathe around the suffocating presence of janet and joseph.
there were moments of emotional resonance in the loving spirit, and a sense of devotion to place that lent power to the sense of homecoming in jennifer's final return to plyn, but i couldn't help feeling that it was a little thin in places; the four central characters, echoing each other as they do, depended on each other for dimension, and by the time the narrative reached the third and fourth generations, chris and jenny, the strain of balancing past and present felt very obvious to me, and neither character had much room to breathe around the suffocating presence of janet and joseph.