Take a photo of a barcode or cover
literaturejuggle 's review for:
The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame
Very conflicted whether to give this three or four stars. Basically, the writing is wonderful. Grahame pours charm and wit into every scene, every sentence and in these moments, it's just lovely to read. A similar kind of wit to Milne's Winnie-The-Pooh. It's also genuinely creepy at times, showing a real skill. BUT this is not a novel. It's a series of short stories connected by recurring characters, until the last couple which form one narrative. While the repulsive Toad is off being arrested and escaping prison (something they never resolve - won't the police just arrest him again later?) the Water Rat and Mole have a series of utterly unrelated adventures, that they pretty much never mention again.
Sometimes the narrative drive stumbles so completely to a halt that there's no motivation to continue reading. The main culprit for this being the chapter in which Rat is annoyed at all his friends who migrate at the end of summer until he meets a sea rat and gets hypnotised by this life and Mole has to basically tie him down until he is cured. The whole chapter nearly is Rat listening to someone else wax lyrical.
And then when Toad gets reunited with the Water Rat towards the end, Rat tells him that Mole has been living at Toad Hall until he was attacked, and since then has been spending all his time keeping an eye on it... WHEN did that happen? Last time we see Mole, he's still living with Rat!
So, in detail and style, it's absolutely charmingly wonderful. But in content and as an actual story, it's just a bunch of random stuff.
Sometimes the narrative drive stumbles so completely to a halt that there's no motivation to continue reading. The main culprit for this being the chapter in which Rat is annoyed at all his friends who migrate at the end of summer until he meets a sea rat and gets hypnotised by this life and Mole has to basically tie him down until he is cured. The whole chapter nearly is Rat listening to someone else wax lyrical.
And then when Toad gets reunited with the Water Rat towards the end, Rat tells him that Mole has been living at Toad Hall until he was attacked, and since then has been spending all his time keeping an eye on it... WHEN did that happen? Last time we see Mole, he's still living with Rat!
So, in detail and style, it's absolutely charmingly wonderful. But in content and as an actual story, it's just a bunch of random stuff.