"The Middle Window", Elizabeth Goudge

I was surprised to discover a copy of an Elizabeth Goudge book I'd never even heard of, let alone read. But I did have a suspicion that as with "The Castle on the Hill" there might be a good reason for that, and unfortunately I was right.

( Read more... )

The first moment at which the book actually rang true to me wasn't until halfway through the whole thing, at the very end of Book 1, when it takes a sudden turn into horror: the agony of betrayal and the dreadful idea of possession and the past coming back to haunt you carry an actual emotional punch in the way that none of the preceding romanticised material does. And then Book 2 is like suddenly coming out of a fog; everything clicks into place as soon as we get into the 1745 story, which one suspects is the aspect the author really wanted to write in the first place. ( Read more... )

Tomato time

It's clearly tomato time (or possibly tomato temperature, but it's still pretty chilly; my breath was steaming tonight after dark, and we had an unexpected hailstorm this afternoon).

Since yesterday we now have four Roma tomatoes and two towel-tomatoes fully germinated; a pity it's not the other way round (I may have to plant some more towel-tomatoes to get enough plants for the summer), but it demonstrates that the seed is viable and ready to come up. Now the question is whether they will develop into healthy plants or fail to thrive...