Getting ready for March!
The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge
“I can't bear it, she thought abruptly, and for the first time in her life. I just can't bear it. What do I do? What do I do?
Such a small thing can sometimes lighten despair. In Miss Brown's case it was just a tune...”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Castle on the Hill
Goudge’s WWII novel
In March we will be reading The Castle on the Hill, the novel at Elizabeth Goudge‘s wrote about the West Country, its castles and coasts, and how its people found love and meaning during the war.
Join us in March!
Goudge wrote this novel as inspired by Berry Pomeroy Castle while she was living in Marldon, UK. It is a special novel for her as it is one of two which she set in her current time period—the other being her beloved, The Scent of Water! There is something very poignant about these two novels which she wrote as history was unfurling.
I will be sharing setting photos, book quotes, characters and scenes all month here in posts, and we will enjoy discussing it together live on Zoom on Wednesday, March 26th at 3PM EST. Hope you can join us!
Get your copy
You can find The Castle on the Hill in paperback at: Blackwells, Amazon, EBay, Thrift Books or Abebooks.
Goudge Readalong list for 2025
“…A street musician was playing a violin somewhere down in the street below. Miss Brown was not particularly musical but she liked good tunes, and especially on the violin… she was slowly made aware that she was one of a multitude that went upon pilgrimage… she knew that the way was stony and painful, dreadful, terrifying; yet worth daring all the same.”
🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Castle on the Hill
Miss Brown and her predicament tear my heart anew each time I read this novel. Knowing that Goudge wrote this and The Scent of Water as history unfolded makes the characters feel doubly real and personal. Her ability to speak so clearly yet gently of real, individual pain and suffering is what makes her stand out to me as an author who will appeal across time and readership.
It is a while since I read this title, but I found the idea of an Elizabethan manor house within the walls of a medieval castle a lovely one. I have had a holiday in the area and made sure I visited all the EG locations and Berry Pomeroy Castle was one of my favourites.
Miss Brown’s loss of her home and the building of a new life for herself miles away is very poignant. And there are so many of EG’s books where there is an unrequited love and the depictions of complex relationships that dismissing her writing as being overly sentimental and ‘it's just a romance’ is just a very simplistic take on her works.