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Now this part is so, so so much better - anyone would think she simply couldn't write modern-day fiction, if she hadn't already produced "The Bird in the Tree"...

Well, the horror actually works. The love-story doesn't, the predestined soulmates stuff doesn't, the embarrassing amateur poetry doesn't, but the horror of betrayal and of the past coming back to haunt you has an actual power in a more than mediocre book.

Oh dear, this is not good.
I did rather suspect it might not be, given that this is an Elizabeth Goudge novel of which for some reason I've never even heard, let alone previously encountered a copy.
At a guess and without reading the blurb, this is going to be a "Goudge does D.K.Broster" featuring time slips and the 'Forty-five, but I could still be wrong...

I suspected there'd be a dash of magical realism in this book, and there kind of is. It's always felt like the past collides with the present in a semi-literal way and I think it just happened. We're in the past on the page now, but I think it's because of that collision. I don't always like when books do this, but I have to say it feels right for this one.

Oh, how I wish I'd read this one last month. Having just gotten home from Scotland, it would've been such a treat to have this in my thoughts before I went. Still, reading it now allows me to think I'm back there. Loving it.

This made me laugh. Judy is seasick and some lines from Othello spring to her mind about the rolling waves. “She had never appreciated Shakespeare less” (92).

This book is growing on me.