The Castle on the Hill

Goudge is adept at taking those on the outskirts of society and weaving tapestries of their lives. In this novel we have pacifist, a spinster, a Jewish refugee, orphans, an aging gentleman's gentleman, and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy all living in England during 1940-41.

I loved the plot. I didn't always love the way it was carried out. There are plenty of thoughtful musings on life and living through history that, this week and this pandemic year, I identified with more than normally.

Just as she created a whole 200- year history of a town in The Dean's Watch, here she creates a family. The ending felt a little forced and the stories that I cared about were never really resolved. Also I wanted more background, which never came, on Jo. show more This was very uncharacteristic of her normal style. show less

Somewhat compulsive reading set in the war years, featuring a middle-aged woman who has lost her home in the war, and a Jewish refugee musician. There are also two delightful small London evacuees. The horrors of war are sensitively handled, but on re-reading for the third or fourth time, I found it rather depressing. It's inevitable that there is a great deal of suffering in this era, but it felt rather too much.

Elizabeth Goudge's writing is always a tad long-winded, but beautifully done with a strong sense of poetry. I found it quite hard going in places, and had to slow down to read the descriptive passages. When I did so, they were mostly worthwhile but there were places where I skimmed.

This is a deeply poignant story, written in the early years of World War II when the outcome was still very much in question, and the author and her fellow countrymen, along with her characters in the novel, were steeling themselves to bravely face their possibly horrific fates under a sea invasion of England. As she penned this novel, Elizabeth Goudge was living in a small country cottage near the village of Marldon, Devonshire with her frail, elderly mother; their days and nights were punctuated by the droning of fighter planes and bombers passing overhead, and the sound of explosions as German bombs exploded in the nearby coastal cities of Torquay and Paignton. Though Marldon itself escaped direct bombing, the inhabitants were show more extremely aware of their very real danger, and the stresses of living in wartime are very evident in this novel.

Elizabeth Goudge likes to sort out her couples and pair them off in their proper order. Children are inevitably provided with the best possible homes; damaged marriages are salvaged; family rifts are healed; happy spinsters and bachelors regain their peaceful solitude and worthwhile occupations. The Castle on the Hill runs true to form, but it has much to recommend it in its thoughtful passages and articulate characters. The setting is lovingly described, and most of the characters are fully realized and allowed their chance to show their full and complex humanity.

Given that the book was written in wartime, in the very time that it portrays, it acts as an interesting and quite readable realistic-idealistic period piece. The horrors and tragedies of the war are true to life; the human response of the heroes and heroines is certainly the ideal.

The last few pages have numerous references to the comforts of religion and the role of God in human lives, but this is not at all a “preachy” book. I thought it was one of the less rambling and more focussed adult novels by this often-underrated writer. I could definitely see shades of some of the characters of Goudge’s most well-known and beloved books, the Damerosehay novels (The Bird in the Tree – 1940, The Herb of Grace - 1948, and The Heart of the Family – 1953) which were written during and after the war years; The Castle on the Hill is something of a dress rehearsal, though it stands alone as a story complete unto itself, with characters whom we never again meet, though their soul sisters and brothers reappear in different guise in her many other books.

For a much fuller review, please visit my blog post: http://leavesandpages.com/2012/08/20/review-the-castle-on-the-hill-by-elizabeth-... show less

Scary to think when this was written (1942) the outcome of the war was unknown. This adds an extra poignancy to a book that tells of the effect of the war on the lives of people from different social classes and foreshadows the changes that will come in the post-war world. Makes a stand for the survival of music and love!

This is a gentle and sympathetic story about people coping with the horrors of war on the domestic front. Set in a castle on the south-east coast of England during World War II, it tells the story of Rupert Birley, the castle's owner, a widower and historian, his two nephews (one a fighter pilot), and three new arrivals: the new housekeeper, and two small girls who have been evacuated from London and the Blitz. It describes their attempts to adapt to each other and to overcome their personal monsters. Each character is handled with great sympathy and, as in the author's other books, strength of faith somehow finds a way to offer a bulwark even to those who have lost theirs.

Goudge is a deeply spiritual writer, and her conviction that show more faith can overcome vicissitude is heartening, though it may be more readily accessible to readers who enjoy the classics of English literature. For those who take to her, she is a rewarding writer. show less

takes place in 1940's, during the height of the bombing of London. A 40 year old woman is displaced and ends up being the head of the household of a castle out in the country. I found this to be a tough book. People loving, people dying, people sacrificing for eachother. In the end, Miss Brown, who loved the owner of the castle, is rejected by him, but then is asked in turn by another man, and she sacrifices so that he, and some orphan children, can have a Home. Referred to as Second Best" love. I would rather die alone than have a woman marry me out of some sense of pity, duty or friendship."

Makes an interesting comparison with Elizabeth Jane Howard's "Cazalet" novels