A Stranger at Green Knowe

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Summary: Fourth in the Green Knowe series
Review: Ping, one of the refugee children from the River at Green Knowe, returns to spend the summer with Tolly's grandmother at Green Knowe, as Tolly is on a vacation with his parents. Ida has written to Mrs. Oldknow, asking her to ask Ping to stay. The adventures this time center on an escaped gorilla who comes to stay in Toseland Thicket -- a tangle of woods across the moat from the Green Knowe garden. Also a wonderful book. Imaginative and sensitive and mysterious.

Rating:
Summary: "Don't move Ping. He's here. In the doorway."
Review: The fourth book in L. M. Boston's Green Knowe series is a step away from the usual formula. Tolly is absent once more, though luckily Mrs Oldknow has returned in time to receive a letter from young Ida, (from "The River at Green Knowe") asking her if her friend Ping might stay with her in her mysterious, magically inclined house. Missing Tolly, Mrs Oldknow agrees, and soon Ping, a young Burmese orphan and refugee, is happily exploring Toseland Thicket at Green Knowe.

But the story begins long before this, in the Congo, where a young gorilla is separated from his family and captured in order to make the long journey from his tropical home to the concrete realm of the Zoo. In one of the most evocative descriptions of gorilla life and enviroments I've ever read, Boston sets the scene for the story to come with descriptions such as: "even at noon the jungle is like a heavily curtained room", and "thunderstorms worthy of the beginning of the world". If you have discovered Boston's incredible use of language in her previous books, then this one won't fail to disappoint.

When Ping and Hanno the gorilla first meet at the Zoo, there is an instant connection bordering on the spiritual. It therefore seems almost fate that when Hanno goes missing from the Zoo (escaping via a clumsily locked door) it is at Toseland Thicket that Ping finds him. Drawing on what must have been carefully researched facts about gorillas and their lives (not suprising since the book was written when gorillas were first being seriously studied), Boston creates an utterly realistic bond between boy and gorilla.

But an escaped gorilla is big news, and the authorities cannot be drawn away for long, despite Ping's best efforts. With the police and Hanno's Keeper moving in, it is finally up to Hanno to make a choice: captivity or freedom?

"A Stranger at Green Knowe" is often considered the best of the Green Knowe books because of the sensitive and detailed way in which the gorilla's circumstances are brought to life (there's no sappy Disney "Mighty Joe Young" here!) Her descriptions on his way of life, his powerful disposition and the tragedy of his being are nothing less than sublime. Like she did with the blind Susan and West Indian Jacob of "Treasure of Green Knowe", Boston shows a wisdom before her time.

However, some people may miss Tolly and the magical elements of the mansion, as this book is focused solely on the real life mystery of the gorillas. Rest assured though, in the next book "A Stranger at Green Knowe", both Tolly and the magic are brought back in full force. If you are into gorilla stories, I can suggest some movies that you may enjoy: Rene Russo's "Buddy", "Back to the Wild" concerning a gorilla taught sign language, and of course "Gorillas in the Mist".

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Summary: Green Knowe without magic
Review: This book is a sport: it's the only volume in the Green Knowe series in which magic makes no appearance--unless you count as magic a peculiar almost-friendship between Hanno, a gorilla escaped from the London Zoo, and the 11-year-old Chinese refugee boy, Ping, who appeared in the previous volume and is inexplicably drawn to the ape upon first viewing him in his cage. Ping's friend Ida undertakes to write Mrs. Oldknow, who is alone in the old Norman manor while Tolly spends the summer with his father and stepmother in Scotland, and ask if she would consider inviting Ping back to stay with her--which she does. He's still en route when he learns of Hanno's escape from the zoo. At first everyone assumes the gorilla is somewhere in Regents Park, but by a peculiar twist of fate he ends up in the "thicket" at one end of the manor garden just as Ping is exploring it.

Green Knowe books are best when Tolly and Mrs. Oldknow are both present, and at least this volume includes one of them, but the lack of anything supernatural seems to put the book out of kilter with the rest of the series, even though it's the most often recommended after the opening volume. Written at a time when gorillas were first being seriously studied and understood, it suggests that the author was herself so fascinated by them that she decided, willy-nilly, to write a book about them, and couldn't think of any place to put one except at Green Knowe. It's also, ultimately, a rather sad book, with an inevitably tragic climax, even though Ping does find a home with Mrs. Oldknow in the end. It *is* necessary to have read it in order to understand part of what happens in the following volume, but it should definitely not be read as an introduction to the series, since it has very little in common with them but its setting.