OVERVIEW: Towers in the Mist
Aug. 13th, 2025 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI bought Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge at the same time as I bought ‘The Heart of the Family’, discussed here, so I felt obliged to read it. But I won't be buying any more of Goudge's books from this point on. This is a historical novel, with an imaginary family, the Leighs, replacing a real-life family in Elizabethan Oxford and interacting with some historical figures. It starts with would-be scholar Faithful Croker about to reach Oxford, and ends with Queen Elizabeth I leaving it in tears, after her first visit. Some of the things that drove me spare about ‘The Heart of the Family’ are present and correct – pseudo-spiritual nonsense about rebirth - but this book's particular irritations include quoting of the poetry of the time and stopping the narrative to tell about Oxford’s history or myths. Quite a lot of characters have visions of the long line of scholars who came to the city, and who will come yet. (Not noted: the shock they would have at the thought that women and people from all over the world would be among them.) There are a couple of moments where you’re reminded that the book was written in the twentieth century.
In an echo of ‘The Heart of the Family’, one of the youngest Leigh girls is called Meg, but she is not a main character, we enter the mind of a dog at one point, and there’s a Great-Aunt of great age, especially in the Tudor era when life expectancy was lower than it is now, which is perhaps why people were counted as adults earlier. That’s one of the striking things: that scholars then were likely to be the age of secondary school pupils these days. Of their number are Philip Sidney and Walter Raleigh.
There is a particularly ridiculous plot twist involving the youngest Leigh, although there are a few moments of wit, where I wasn’t feeling like I was grimly reading on so that I could move on to another book. The point that some seven years into Elizabeth’s reign, when the country (England, essentially) had violently swung from Protestantism to Catholicism to Protestantism again was a time of hope comes alive, even if Goudge is…confused about Christianity, e.g. would nuns be thinking about nymphs?
I hope to post more about books in the near future.
In an echo of ‘The Heart of the Family’, one of the youngest Leigh girls is called Meg, but she is not a main character, we enter the mind of a dog at one point, and there’s a Great-Aunt of great age, especially in the Tudor era when life expectancy was lower than it is now, which is perhaps why people were counted as adults earlier. That’s one of the striking things: that scholars then were likely to be the age of secondary school pupils these days. Of their number are Philip Sidney and Walter Raleigh.
There is a particularly ridiculous plot twist involving the youngest Leigh, although there are a few moments of wit, where I wasn’t feeling like I was grimly reading on so that I could move on to another book. The point that some seven years into Elizabeth’s reign, when the country (England, essentially) had violently swung from Protestantism to Catholicism to Protestantism again was a time of hope comes alive, even if Goudge is…confused about Christianity, e.g. would nuns be thinking about nymphs?
I hope to post more about books in the near future.
