Tracks

by Ann Thwaite

When Julie leaves Leeds with her father and emigrates to New Zealand, the change in environment and culture takes a lot of getting used to. But when she stays on a farm and develops a rapport with Ross, a difficult and sensitive boy, she begins to understand the different attitudes to life. Her participation in the family's fight to save some land from development and a dramatic mountain rescue, help Julie to overcome her homesickness.

139 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

Ann Thwaite is a British writer who is the author of five major biographies. AA Milne: His Life was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (Duff Cooper Prize, 1985) was described by John Carey as "magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time". Glimpses of the Wonderful about the life of Edmund Gosse's father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D.J. Taylor in The Independent as one of the "Ten Best Biographies" ever. Her biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett was originally published as Waiting for the Party (1974) and reissued in 2020 with the title Beyond the Secret Garden, with a foreword by Jacqueline Wilson. Emily Tennyson, The Poet's Wife (1996) was reissued by Faber Finds for the Tennyson bicentenary in 2009.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two juvenile titles by Ann Thwaite that I read prior to this one (The House in Turner Square and The Camelthorn Papers) were quite good so I was chuffed to find this one, published a couple decades later, on the shelves of a used bookstore. I wasn't even too dismayed by the deeply unappealing jacket illustration. It was in lovely condition, and was signed by the author -- and published in the UK, and here it was in an American store.

Alas, the thrill of finding Tracks, and surprising my sister (from whom I'd borrowed the other books) with it was the best thing about this book. There's some interesting description of the New Zealand countryside, but the story, of saving a piece of wilderness from an encroaching pipeline, is told in a flat and perfunctory way. Too bad, because Thwaite is certainly capable of better. I felt that perhaps here she was trying to write for a younger audience, and in a more up to date style than that of her earlier books. It's certainly shorter than her others, and that was one saving grace.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nb--the jacket flap copy (which I copied verbatim when I added this to goodreads) not only has a bad comma, but is wrong--Julie is not homesick, she barely says five words to Ross, and the "dramatic mountain rescue" is only a few pages long. A more accurate description--a girl moves to New Zealand and her loneliness is alleviated by being dumped on a farm which she enjoys exploring. She likes the farm kids and is bothered by the tension between Ross and his dad. The kids are sad and angry that a pipeline will destroy the last bit of remaining undisturbed native vegetation, and try to get it moved.

A nice visit to New Zealand, but unfortunately the author didn't invest quite enough time or effort in either characters, setting, or story to make this a truly good read. We readers don't, for instance, get enough detail about the native bush to care for at it at anything more than an intellectual level....