The Heart of the Family

by Elizabeth Goudge

Book Overview

The family seemed intricately bound together with threads frayed with age, yet still strong and permanent . . . until he came.
Despite the "crinkled pink petals strewn in the path of those who would have preferred red," four generations of Eliots have survived the War and are moving forward. The family's remarkable matriarch Lucilla is still with them, though she's facing the dark night of the soul. All is turned on its head with the arrival...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 161970076X
• ISBN13: 9781619700765
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Tough Going But Worth It

I disagree with William Tegner, who has not apparently read the preceding 2 books and was therefore clearly at sea most of the time. This is a very good book, the third of the Eliot trilogy. It is not merely "more of the same" about the Eliots, but in fact is considerably denser, i.e., harder to get through, and even, dare I say it, more despairing than any other book by Goudge that I have read (and unlike Tegner, I have read many). The themes it raises are those of war, "the pity of war, the pity war distills", atomic devastation, and at the more local level, those of familial (and familiar) disappointments. Specifically, Ben, the eldest of Naomi and George's children has turned away from the career they selected for him, and has also announced that he will marry, as his parents see it, "beneath him". This is not a happy book, and it is tough going after the almost lyric poetry of the earlier two, but it is well worth the effort. It is Goudge at her most adult, her least fanciful. It is like suddenly reading prose where before it was all poetry.

A fairy tale for adults

'The Heart of the Family' is the third in a trilogy of books about the Eliot family, who live in the ancient and atmospheric houses of Damerosehay and The Herb of Grace. They are a talented bunch, middle-class and in many ways privileged, but also suffering and making mistakes as they struggle to make sense of life and their own sufferings. Elizabeth Goudge has a highly imaginative and siritual vision of the inner meaning of life and invests ordinary events with quite intense beauty and sweetness. I have read a dismissive comment that she writes fairytales for adults. Actually, there is truth in this, because she reduces life to its deepest significance and understands that we must have myths and symbols in our imagination which help us to grasp this meaning. Her work rewards careful reading and re-reading and one can ponder some of her sentences for a long time. Some would find her work over-sentimental, but it seems to me that she has paid a high price in terms of personal search and even suffering to understand some of the things she writes about. Her writings are not in keeping with the material spirit of the age, but contain a timeless wisdom. They are also enjoyable and entertaining to read.