Book Review: Magic for Marigold
May. 5th, 2024 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThe best and the worst that can be said of L. M. Montgomery’s Magic for Marigold is that it is fine. It’s a very readable book, but never anything more than that.
Marigold is an only child, who lives in the homestead of Cloud of Spruce with Old Grandmother, Young Grandmother, and her widowed mother. No children live nearby, and so Marigold plays with her imaginary friend Sylvia, and it will perhaps tell you all that you need to know about the book that although we hear a lot about Sylvia, we never actually get to play with Sylvia and Marigold.
Instead, Marigold makes a succession of temporary friends. The runaway princess Varvara, who escaped from a nearby hotel and just wants to have fun for a day. Her cousin Gwennie, whom Marigold started off hating because an aunt always extolled Gwennie’s goodness to the skies – until Marigold discovers that Gwennie hates her because said aunt has always told Gwennie that Marigold is the good one. A succession of girls that Marigold meets on visits to various aunts and cousins. A couple of boys.
This book evidently started out as a collection of magazine stories, which explains a lot about it. Each story is interesting enough in itself, but they never add up to anything – just separate beads strung together on the connecting thread of Marigold’s imaginary friend Sylvia, who of course vanishes in the last chapter.
Marigold is an only child, who lives in the homestead of Cloud of Spruce with Old Grandmother, Young Grandmother, and her widowed mother. No children live nearby, and so Marigold plays with her imaginary friend Sylvia, and it will perhaps tell you all that you need to know about the book that although we hear a lot about Sylvia, we never actually get to play with Sylvia and Marigold.
Instead, Marigold makes a succession of temporary friends. The runaway princess Varvara, who escaped from a nearby hotel and just wants to have fun for a day. Her cousin Gwennie, whom Marigold started off hating because an aunt always extolled Gwennie’s goodness to the skies – until Marigold discovers that Gwennie hates her because said aunt has always told Gwennie that Marigold is the good one. A succession of girls that Marigold meets on visits to various aunts and cousins. A couple of boys.
This book evidently started out as a collection of magazine stories, which explains a lot about it. Each story is interesting enough in itself, but they never add up to anything – just separate beads strung together on the connecting thread of Marigold’s imaginary friend Sylvia, who of course vanishes in the last chapter.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-06 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-06 10:32 pm (UTC)