TOWERS IN THE MIST

by Elizabeth Goudge ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1938

This is a new departure for Elizabeth Goudge -- Oxford of the 16th century as the setting for students torn between a passion for the classics, a taste for poetry, an imaginative conception of a rather unreal world, the yearning for adventure and exploration which reports from the New World have inspired and an adolescent capacity for revelling and mischief, making and playing at love. Her background of the life and times is excellently detailed as are the interpolations of the earlier history of Oxford, but somehow her characters do not come alive. It is fun, however, to stumble on a schoolboy Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, etc. As in her modern books she is at her best with small children, in this case the motherless family of Canon Leigh. There is less of the fantasy quality, less of story, than in Island Magic and City of Bells. There is almost too much dependence on atmosphere to carry the story along. The emotional quality seem thin, compared, for instance, with Helen Waddell's Peter Abelard, which it somehow recalls. But Elizabeth Goudge writes with charm and grace and her book is good reading and assured of a market with her growing public. The publisher is enthusiastic and promises good backing.

Pub Date: May 20, 1938

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1938

Categories: FICTION