The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
by Penelope Lively
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The revival of an ancient dance in an English village stirs up legendary unseen evil spirits which terrify a girl and her friend.Tags
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Atmospheric tale of an old pagan practice revived for a summer fete, summoning dangerous old forces that focus on a young outsider in a rural village. Marvelous writing evokes the rich summer countryside as well as loneliness, alienation, friendship and strange dark undercurrents. Visitor Lucy watches her one friend, square peg Kester, almost willfully become the prey and tries to save him from himself and from the hunt. The writing is of a particularly high standard and the whole thing is a chilling little read.
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73+ Works 14,586 Members
Penelope Lively has written over 18 books for children, and over 15 titles for adults, distinguishing herself on both levels. Among the awards she has received are the coveted Booker Prize for the adult novel "Moon Tiger" (1987) and the Carnegie Medal for the highly acclaimed juvenile work, "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe" (1973). In Lively's writing, show more for both adults and children, the recurrent theme is interpreting the past through exploring the function of memory. "My particular preoccupation as a writer is with memory. Both with memory in the historical sense and memory in the personal sense." Beginning her writing career in the early 1970's, Lively wrote exclusively for children for over a decade. Because children have limited memories, devices were used to explore their perceptions of the past, such as ghosts in "Uninvited Ghosts and Other Stories" (1985), and a sampler in "A Stitch in Time' (1976). Lively's first adult novel, "The Road to Lichfield" (1977) was the result of turning to an older audience when she felt inspiration running out. Her adult novels include "Passing On" (1995), the story of a mother's legacy to her children and 'Oleander, Jacarandi: A Childhood Perceived' (1994) which is a memoir of Lively's childhood. Penelope (Low) Lively, born March 17, 1933 in Cairo, Egypt, had a most unusual childhood. She grew up in Cairo with no formal education until age 12, when her family put her in boarding school in England. After earning a B.A. in history at Oxford in 1955, she married Jack Lively, a university professor, whom she calls her most useful critic. They have a son and a daughter, Adam and Josephine. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
- Original title
- The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
- Alternate titles
- The Wild Hunt of the Ghost Hounds
- Original publication date
- 1971
- Disambiguation notice
- The Wild Hunt of the Ghost Hounds was originally published as The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 152
- Popularity
- 216,716
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.04)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 3
