OVERVIEW: Clover
Dec. 23rd, 2008 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI was hoping to post my review of the film Inkheart, but it requires a bit more work than I have time for, and it may be a while in coming. Meanwhile, I bought four books yesterday (two Brazils, one of which I may own already, a Geoffrey Trease and a family book from a writer I didn't know of before. This was after picking up Clover by Susan Coolidge over the weekend. Say what you like about Oxfam's charity books shops, I do find my sort of books there.
I repeat, I bought Clover. I'm not sure how well known this fact is, but Susan Coolidge wrote a lot of sequels to her famous 'What Katy Did'. For years, I laboured under the misapprehension that it was a trilogy, and then, one day, I found 'In The High Valley' and discovered I was wrong.
The titles are: What Katy Did, What Katy Did At School, What Katy Did Next, Clover, In The High Valley.
As Katy grows up, the focus shifts to the younger Carrs. If nothing else, I will be rereading ITHV over Christmas.
Anyway, for the beginning of the book, I was thinking Coolidge might have retained the formula and called this What Katy and Clover Did Next because the focus of the initial chapters is on Katy's wedding, with Clover having a somewhat Jo Marchish response to Meg being taken away from her. The wonderful Rose Red tells her she's being silly and discountin the influence husbands have and will know differently some day. Which, of course, proves to be the case, as Clover is sent out west to keep any eye on her younger brother Phil, who fell into an icy lake (shades of the Marches again) and needs looking after. There they meet their cousin Clarence who is running a ranch and make new friends. Clover falls for the landscape and a nice chap while Phil improves, so by the end of their stay, Clover is promising to come back.
Stylistically it's what you'd expect in the tail-end of such a series. There are a lot of gossipy letters, and the whole book is one, in a way, telling us what our old friends got up to. (I always wondered how Coolidge felt about that after Katy killed off the fictional girls in the serial she was telling Amy because she was sick of them, although Coolidge refers affectionately enough as a narrator to Katy in this book).It's got the coy 'for girls' approach to romance, I mean, Clover is almost so innocent as to be a ninny. Coolidge has fun describing the landscape. The struggles over character are much, much slighter than in the first book.
As I won't be posting again before then, A merry and peaceful Christmas to you all. I hope you get a chance to curl up with a good book!
I repeat, I bought Clover. I'm not sure how well known this fact is, but Susan Coolidge wrote a lot of sequels to her famous 'What Katy Did'. For years, I laboured under the misapprehension that it was a trilogy, and then, one day, I found 'In The High Valley' and discovered I was wrong.
The titles are: What Katy Did, What Katy Did At School, What Katy Did Next, Clover, In The High Valley.
As Katy grows up, the focus shifts to the younger Carrs. If nothing else, I will be rereading ITHV over Christmas.
Anyway, for the beginning of the book, I was thinking Coolidge might have retained the formula and called this What Katy and Clover Did Next because the focus of the initial chapters is on Katy's wedding, with Clover having a somewhat Jo Marchish response to Meg being taken away from her. The wonderful Rose Red tells her she's being silly and discountin the influence husbands have and will know differently some day. Which, of course, proves to be the case, as Clover is sent out west to keep any eye on her younger brother Phil, who fell into an icy lake (shades of the Marches again) and needs looking after. There they meet their cousin Clarence who is running a ranch and make new friends. Clover falls for the landscape and a nice chap while Phil improves, so by the end of their stay, Clover is promising to come back.
Stylistically it's what you'd expect in the tail-end of such a series. There are a lot of gossipy letters, and the whole book is one, in a way, telling us what our old friends got up to. (I always wondered how Coolidge felt about that after Katy killed off the fictional girls in the serial she was telling Amy because she was sick of them, although Coolidge refers affectionately enough as a narrator to Katy in this book).It's got the coy 'for girls' approach to romance, I mean, Clover is almost so innocent as to be a ninny. Coolidge has fun describing the landscape. The struggles over character are much, much slighter than in the first book.
As I won't be posting again before then, A merry and peaceful Christmas to you all. I hope you get a chance to curl up with a good book!
