A review by foggy_rosamund
Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge

2.0

Though I enjoy Goudge's work, and enjoyed some elements of this novel, it is one of her weakest. The Linnet children are staying with their grandmother as their father is serving in the British army. However, their grandmother wants to split them up, sending some to boarding school, and get rid of their dog, so the children run away. This problem is resolved in the first chapter, when their Uncle Ambrose, a vicar, takes them in. Afterwards, this text is essentially a "happily ever after" for the children, and the problems within the story are all superficial and extraneous to their own lives. There is no real sense of danger or tension. Goudge's work celebrates the magic of England: a sense of timelessness, wild beauty, and a love of one's home. Her work has a fairytale feeling, not only in its use of magic, but in its stock characters: servants are always humble and devoted; girls are good and boys are plucky; vicars are noble; widows are sad. In her best works, such as The Little White Horse this can add to the feeling of timelessness, but when her story isn't successful, the clumsiness of these characterisations comes to the fore. As well as that, in this novel the colonialism at the heart of England and English values is highlighted, with the novel's casual mentions of the British army in India, the presence of a grateful African servant, and the plundering of Egypt in order to decorate English drawing rooms. Other reviewers have also mentioned the magical curing of one character's disability as a problem, and while I hate the trope of a magical cure, as soon as disability presented itself I was sure Goudge was going to resolve it in this manner, so I wasn't surprised. It's another way in which her plots are always predictable: and, in this case, reductive. This is probably only a book for Goudge completists: and there are things to enjoy here, particularly her descriptions of food, horses and the Devonshire countryside. But overall, it's a mess.