One of these days I should start waiting until I’m done reading books to review them, but it’s always while I’m in the throes that I want to talk about them. For some reason, Elizabeth Goudge’s The Scent of Water is available on Kindle – the only one of hers that is – and so I’m reading it. I love Linnets and Valerians and The Little White Horse fiercely, despite only having met them as an adult (a introduction for which I owe Jo Rowling), but I never got too far with Green Dolphin Street, the only other adult book of Goudge’s that I have. This one is lovely, though; its most salient feature is its intense Englishness, but intense in a quiet and subtle way. It reminds me of Tey, a lot; the most likeable characters understand each other in the way of the Ferrar family in Brat Ferrar. Tey’s the right time period, too, but this one is set in the country in an old house among a village that has been changed by the wars but is still recognizable as the same community it always was. Because of that it also reminds me a bit of Gaskell, and the references to Austen seem entirely appropriate. (I keep thinking of Lark Rise to Candleford, too, which is silly because I’ve never actually read it. I suppose I should – and also God is an Englishman, which I do have on the Kindle.)
I do miss the fantasy of Goudge’s children’s books, but this one shares their loveableness.