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osprey_archerI’ve been reading stacks of old books recently, because when they’re off-copyright I can get them for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE on my Kindle. You would think I would get used to the part where I get them for FREEEEEEEEEEE, but so far it still makes me do a little happy dance.
I found Phyllis through![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
freelancerrh’s series of posts about 100 Books by Women, Courtesy of Gutenberg.org, which is a great resource if you’re looking for recommendations for off-copyright books to read. Her reviews are excellent: thoughtful and comprehensive, capturing the feel of the book.
I had high hopes for this book. The author also wrote A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, and it’s hard to go wrong with a pedigree like that; and moreover, the book gets off to an excellent start. Young Marco lives in a run-down house in a dull, dirty street in London – one of a string of dilapidated dwellings he’s inhabited in his childhood hop-scotching through the capitals of Europe. But despite the family’s apparent poverty, true nobility shines out of them, and in his peripatetic childhood Marco has received an education fit for a prince.
I’m a sucker for “gentility fallen on straitened circumstances” stories, and also for tales of people acquiring education in an off-beat manner, so this book had me at the get-go. But the story loses steam as it goes, finally falling apart about three-quarters of the way through. Marcos finishes his quest and then goes home and just…sits around and waits for a couple of chapters, which is pretty much death to excitement and pacing.
Moreover, the continued “mystery” about the identity of the Lost Prince becomes simply insupportable. Now, Marco doesn’t have the readers’ advantage of knowing that he’s in a book called The Lost Prince, so it makes sense that he doesn’t guess from page one that he is – wait for it! – a descendent of the Lost Prince.
But when Marco goes into a cavern, and all the people in the cavern bow down and kiss his hand and weep for joy because they’re so happy to see him, and he sees an old portrait of the Lost Prince, who just happens to look exactly like his father – and Marco still doesn’t guess that he might just possibly be the Lost Prince's descendent? That just makes him look like an idiot.
,
Very glad I am thatfreelancerrh reviewed this book, because I doubt I would have found it otherwise - which would be too bad, because not only is it a delightful little book, but it's from the time period that I study, too!
(I haven't definitely made up my mind that my dissertation will be an expansion of my honors project, about American girls' literature between 1890 and 1915…but neither have I definitely ruled it out yet. And even if I don't use them for my dissertation, the books from that period will always hold a special interest for me.)
Phyllis has a lot of the qualities that makes books of that period so fun. Strong female friendships: I love Phyllis's friendship with Roxanne and her family. And Phyllis herself is a delightful heroine, with a wonderful quaint voice - she's meant to sound quaint; it's not just an artifact of the fact that the book was written a hundred years ago, though doubtless that amplifies it. Passages like this:
"I went in to unfasten Roxanne's dress and to get mine done likewise, then I could slip home through the garden, which is always so lovely with the moonlight making ghost flowers of Roxanne's ancestral blossoms."
Ghost flowers: I do like that picture. Another quality I love in books of this time period is that sensitivity to nature, the lovely descriptions of flowers and trees and the strong sense of place. Modern teenage and children's books often seem to take place in Anywhere, USA (or Anywhere, Australia), which I think is silly. All places, no matter how dull and featureless they may feel, are specific.
I found Phyllis through
freelancerrh’s series of posts about 100 Books by Women, Courtesy of Gutenberg.org, which is a great resource if you’re looking for recommendations for off-copyright books to read. Her reviews are excellent: thoughtful and comprehensive, capturing the feel of the book.I had high hopes for this book. The author also wrote A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, and it’s hard to go wrong with a pedigree like that; and moreover, the book gets off to an excellent start. Young Marco lives in a run-down house in a dull, dirty street in London – one of a string of dilapidated dwellings he’s inhabited in his childhood hop-scotching through the capitals of Europe. But despite the family’s apparent poverty, true nobility shines out of them, and in his peripatetic childhood Marco has received an education fit for a prince.
I’m a sucker for “gentility fallen on straitened circumstances” stories, and also for tales of people acquiring education in an off-beat manner, so this book had me at the get-go. But the story loses steam as it goes, finally falling apart about three-quarters of the way through. Marcos finishes his quest and then goes home and just…sits around and waits for a couple of chapters, which is pretty much death to excitement and pacing.
Moreover, the continued “mystery” about the identity of the Lost Prince becomes simply insupportable. Now, Marco doesn’t have the readers’ advantage of knowing that he’s in a book called The Lost Prince, so it makes sense that he doesn’t guess from page one that he is – wait for it! – a descendent of the Lost Prince.
But when Marco goes into a cavern, and all the people in the cavern bow down and kiss his hand and weep for joy because they’re so happy to see him, and he sees an old portrait of the Lost Prince, who just happens to look exactly like his father – and Marco still doesn’t guess that he might just possibly be the Lost Prince's descendent? That just makes him look like an idiot.
,
Very glad I am that
freelancerrh reviewed this book, because I doubt I would have found it otherwise - which would be too bad, because not only is it a delightful little book, but it's from the time period that I study, too!(I haven't definitely made up my mind that my dissertation will be an expansion of my honors project, about American girls' literature between 1890 and 1915…but neither have I definitely ruled it out yet. And even if I don't use them for my dissertation, the books from that period will always hold a special interest for me.)
Phyllis has a lot of the qualities that makes books of that period so fun. Strong female friendships: I love Phyllis's friendship with Roxanne and her family. And Phyllis herself is a delightful heroine, with a wonderful quaint voice - she's meant to sound quaint; it's not just an artifact of the fact that the book was written a hundred years ago, though doubtless that amplifies it. Passages like this:
"I went in to unfasten Roxanne's dress and to get mine done likewise, then I could slip home through the garden, which is always so lovely with the moonlight making ghost flowers of Roxanne's ancestral blossoms."
Ghost flowers: I do like that picture. Another quality I love in books of this time period is that sensitivity to nature, the lovely descriptions of flowers and trees and the strong sense of place. Modern teenage and children's books often seem to take place in Anywhere, USA (or Anywhere, Australia), which I think is silly. All places, no matter how dull and featureless they may feel, are specific.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 05:43 am (UTC)Strong female friendships for the win! :) And guess what I just learned about Frances Hodgson Burnett? According to her biography on GoodReads, she lived in Knoxville for a time! I had no idea but I thought this was so cool:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2041.Frances_Hodgson_Burnett
no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-13 09:38 pm (UTC)However, it says on this Web site that she is buried in the Roslyn Cemetery in New York:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2498
I would love to visit it someday! :)
no subject
Date: 2012-08-14 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-16 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-19 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-17 12:46 pm (UTC)I've spent the last week thinking about (amongst other things) books set in Anywhere, Australia, because I've thought most YA books set in Aus actually have a reasonably strong sense of place. However some of that could be due to what I bring to those books as much as the books themselves. So I was wondering if you were thinking of anything in particular when you wrote that?
no subject
Date: 2012-08-18 08:39 pm (UTC)And then it turns out that the point I was making totally counts mostly for American YA. Sadface.