Getting ready for August!
Island Magic by Elizabeth Goudge
“There were the Town and the Harbour just as usual, but yet not just as usual. He had not seen them before at just this hour of sunset. The grey granite walls were flushed with a strange golden light, the roofs were shadowed, dim, the protectors of queer mysteries. Little lights twinkled up and down the streets in the shop windows, and the woods against the sky were black. The masts of the ships were black too in the evening light, were etched like the bare trunks of winter trees against a sky of palest translucent green barred with apricot and pearl grey. The waters of the Harbor, holding a bright remembrance of sunlight on the crest of each little ripple, reflected the pale colours of the sky and the dipping wings of the seagulls. Slat and tar and seaweed gave a delicious tang to the air, and the sounds of the Harbour, subdued by the evening hush, seemed to come from very far away… A world of colour and light, transparent and unreal… A world at the bottom of the sea…”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Island Magic
Let’s start at the very beginning
Who is ready for another Goudge Readalong?
In August we will be reading together from Island Magic, Elizabeth Goudge‘s very first published novel!
I picked it up yesterday because I couldn’t remember how it started, and I was laughing by the end of the first page! I don’t know about you but I could use some more laughter these days, and Colin du Frocq doesn’t disappoint with his cheeky ways.
Join us in August!
I hope you are planning on joining us for a perfect Goudge novel for summertime island dreaming—Island Magic. Goudge wrote this novel as inspired by her beloved Guernsey, her mother’s home in the Channel Islands. It is a beautiful, adventurous story about finding God and family, childhood and redemption. Hope you can join us!
At 291 pages (only 9 chapters) it is a shorter Goudge book, perfect for picking up on holiday. We will be sharing setting photos, book quotes, characters and scenes, and enjoy discussing it together on Zoom the last Wednesday afternoon (3PM EST) of the month.
Get your copy
You can get it in paperback, Kindle or even a vintage copy.
Hope you can join us for all the Goudge novels and children’s books still coming up in 2024:
Love to hear if you will be reading with us in August, and if you will be reading for the first time, or rereading!
*Amazon Affiliate links are included in this newsletter. I make a few cents per recommendation, each of which I hope will be helpful to you!
So glad to reread Island Magic -- especially in August, as the narration tells us that on the twentieth of August, 1888, Colin du Frocq, eight years old, is enjoying the joys of La Rue Clubin. It will be good to follow Island Magic with Green Dolphin Street. Thanks, Julie!
This will be my first time reading this book. Am looking forward to it.