Status Updates From The Daisy Chain

Ethel feels a bit like Anne Shirley to me, in the sense that she’s grown and matured over the course of the book, but the essence of who she is is largely completely the same as it was at the beginning of the novel. I love her so much! ❤️

Blissfully happy 😊❤️🥹🎉

Chapter 20 gave new meaning to the word DEVASTATING 💔🤯😭😱

I’m so glad there’s a sequel to this book! I’m not ready for my time with the May family to come to an end!

What?!?! That’s one of the biggest shocks in anything I’ve ever read in any CMY book!! 🤯🤯🤯🤯

CMY’s portrayal of Norman’s doubts of faith was really moving.

💔😭💔😭💔😭💔😭💔😭

I’m getting very worried about what’s happened to Harry… 😬

It is so endearing and heartwarming to see Dr May and Dr Spencer reconnect after so many years of losing touch with each other.

CMY has a truly remarkable gift for being able to create settings and characters that my heart actually aches to experience in real life! Sometimes the melancholy and longing to be a part of the worlds she creates makes me feel as though I could burst.

I understand Dr May at such a deep level, it’s unnerving… What a profoundly drawn character… So nuanced and flawed and honest and vulnerable and true.

“Two women together, each with the last-word instinct, have no power to cease; and, when the words are spent in explaining–not in scolding–conscience is not called in to silence them, and nothing but dinner, or a thunder-storm can check them.”

I know that, as a man, I have no business finding that sentence as hilarious as I do, but I’m going to say that, because a woman wrote it, it’s OK for me to laugh!

Absolutely LOVE all of the philosophy of education that Yonge includes in this, through the vehicle of the Cocksmoor School.

End of Volume 1! Whew—I had to take off my glasses so I could keep reading while freely wiping tears away! ❤️❤️❤️ Dear Tom’s confession to his dad, and Dr May’s embrace and comfort while he did so!

I can’t get over the character work in this book! ❤️ The sisterly tension between Flora and Ethel… Dr May’s evolving relationship with his children, especially between Margaret, Flora, and Ethel… Ethel’s personal development as a leader and teacher at Cocksmoor…Norman’s cyclical relationship with anxiety related to his schoolwork, even after making resolutions to be more stable… Amazing!

I love the freedom and security with which Dr May and his sons express their emotions! 🥹❤️

That last sentence of Chapter 23 is a bit ominous!! 🫣

I can’t remember the last time I just got so completely lost in a book’s characters and its setting! This is marvellous.

Norman, you’re a better man than me—and you’re still just a boy!!

Tom and Norman’s reconciliation ❤️‍🩹🥹🤧

The young boys ripping down Mr Tomkins’s fence! 😂😈 Just like Mr Sadler’s problems with the Avonlea school children scaring his cows to death so they won’t be milked! 😂😈

But, oh, Tom, Tom… 🫣

Flora is such a snob… 😒 I look forward to her sanctification journey! 😆

This whole episode with Tom and the ink pot is fantastic, and I just love the family dynamics here among the children, and then between the children and their dad, who is trying so hard to parent them as best he can without the help and guidance of his wife.