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Rating: 
Summary: A fairy tale for adults
Review: '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.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough Going But Worth It
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Tough Going But Worth It
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Awful
Review: When I was at school a master wrote on the third page of a boy's essay, "no marks so far". I felt this constantly as I waded through page after page of Ms. Goudge's luscious prose. Nothing seemed to happen, though there were platitudinous descriptions of the English countryside throughout. Or at least "an" English countryside, similar to that described in John Major's hapless "Back to Basics". Obviously I wasn't alone. On page 226 Lucilla remarks to her son, Hilary (yes, Hilary) that, "this has been an eventful day". "Has it?", replies Hilary,"I hadn't noticed anything particular about it". Nor had I. Perhaps I'd missed out on the "spirituality" referred to by another reviewer. If Hilary had too, that was unfortunate, because he is a clergyman. This is an uneventful descrition of the life enjoyed by 0.1 % of the English population fifty years ago. I presume they enjoyed it, but that did not apply to a boy who had been killed in a car accident (this is incidental, not part of the plot - there isn't one). It is mentioned in passing that he will never enjoy the pleasures of having a motorbike, "playing rugger" or standing knee deep watching the waves come in. No, nor playing/watching soccer, going to the movies and buying fish and chips afterwards. But I imagine Ms. Goudge "wouldn't know" about that sort of thing. This was the first Elizabeth Goudge book I have read. It will also be the last. It was both pretty and awful.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Awful
Review: When I was at school a master wrote on the third page of a boy's essay, "no marks so far". I felt this constantly as I waded through page after page of Ms. Goudge's luscious prose. Nothing seemed to happen, though there were platitudinous descriptions of the English countryside throughout. Or at least "an" English countryside, similar to that described in John Major's hapless "Back to Basics". Obviously I wasn't alone. On page 226 Lucilla remarks to her son, Hilary (yes, Hilary) that, "this has been an eventful day". "Has it?", replies Hilary,"I hadn't noticed anything particular about it". Nor had I. Perhaps I'd missed out on the "spirituality" referred to by another reviewer. If Hilary had too, that was unfortunate, because he is a clergyman. This is an uneventful descrition of the life enjoyed by 0.1 % of the English population fifty years ago. I presume they enjoyed it, but that did not apply to a boy who had been killed in a car accident (this is incidental, not part of the plot - there isn't one). It is mentioned in passing that he will never enjoy the pleasures of having a motorbike, "playing rugger" or standing knee deep watching the waves come in. No, nor playing/watching soccer, going to the movies and buying fish and chips afterwards. But I imagine Ms. Goudge "wouldn't know" about that sort of thing. This was the first Elizabeth Goudge book I have read. It will also be the last. It was both pretty and awful.
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