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A review by mat_tobin
A Stranger at Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
4.0
Ping returns to Green Knowe in what was to be the fourth installment. I am fascinated in Boston's attraction to this character since, at this point, he is 'as' present at Tolly. I wonder whether this is Boston's 'Children of Green Knowe' for Ping.
The first part of the story takes us far away from Green Knowe into the 'jungles of Africa' in which we follow a young gorilla as he is horrifically torn from his home and family and shipped to the UK. Skip forward in time and we find Ping's visit to a zoo brings him face to face with a huge gorilla: Hanno who has been kept in captivity for most of his life.
Here then are two 'displaced' characters who find an attachment through the very fact that they have a connection in their disconnection from a sense of home until they both arrive at Green Knowe. When he escapes the zoo, Hanno finds sanctuary in its landscape and so does Ping. There is some clever work here going on by Boston with regards to identity and a sense of place and past - I can see how and why it won the Carnegie back in 1961.
The first part of the story takes us far away from Green Knowe into the 'jungles of Africa' in which we follow a young gorilla as he is horrifically torn from his home and family and shipped to the UK. Skip forward in time and we find Ping's visit to a zoo brings him face to face with a huge gorilla: Hanno who has been kept in captivity for most of his life.
Here then are two 'displaced' characters who find an attachment through the very fact that they have a connection in their disconnection from a sense of home until they both arrive at Green Knowe. When he escapes the zoo, Hanno finds sanctuary in its landscape and so does Ping. There is some clever work here going on by Boston with regards to identity and a sense of place and past - I can see how and why it won the Carnegie back in 1961.