THE STONES OF GREEN KNOWE

What reader who has come under the spell of the author's Norman house would pass up the chance to see it built? Here Roger d'Aulneaux, a young boy in 1120, watches the grand two-story building going up and listens to the builders talk about the life in the stone and about what even then was old magic. Discovering two ancient, powerful chair-shaped stones near his home, Roger (a Tolly in reverse) wishes himself, first, 540 years into the future, where he meets Toby, Linnet and Alexander who speak a ""funny English"" instead of the French that would befit their elegant clothes and manners. . . And next to 1800 and blind Susan with her black ""attendant"" Jacob,--in a ""flimsy, silly"" Green Knowe which, Roger regrets in the author's voice, has replaced the ""strong simplicity"" of old. Then Roger and Tolly meet (their clothes seem much the same and ToRy thinks Roger's leather belt ""terrific""); Roger finds his house ""truly itself"" again but faints to see The Stones carted off to a museum. At last Roger, Tolly, Susan, Linnet, and the rest, including a beautiful young girl Tolly recognizes as his grandmother, assemble for what, in truth, threatens to reduce the end of it all to a genteel tea party. But consider it rather a curtain call. Though as an independent story this can't approach other Green Knowe books (and in fact barely exists), it's as clear as ever--and this is what has made them all so compelling--that Mrs. Boston has Green Knowe in her bones. And here the different stages of its certain life are intertwined as gracefully as are the notes of the song that Roger and Alexander, 540 years apart, play together on their flutes.