Getting ready for November!
A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge
“The train swung round a bend, the blue hills parted like a curtain and the city of Torminster was visible. Seen from a little distance it had a curiously unsubstantial air, as though it were something real yet intangible, a thing you could see but not touch… It seemed a buried city sunk at the bottom of the sea, where no life stirred and no sound was heard but the ringing of the bells as the tide surged through forgotten towers and steeples.
Jocelyn could see a confused mass of roofs and chimneys and church-spires, some high and some low, weather-stained and twisted by age into fantastic shapes. The smoke from the chimneys went straight up into the windless air and then seemed to dissolve into a mist that lay over the city like the waves of the sea that had drowned it, and out of this sea rose a gray rock with three towers... The Cathedral... It stood there gloriously, its majesty softened by the warm day but not diminished, its towers a little withdrawn in the sky yet no less watchful.”
🍂 Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells
Come begin Goudge’s Coziest Series
Who is ready for another Goudge Readalong?
In November we will be reading together A City of Bells, Elizabeth Goudge‘s first novel of her three-book Torminster series, which is based on the cathedral city where she was born, Wells, in the West Country of the UK.
Join us in November!
I hope you are planning on joining us for one of the coziest of Goudge’s novels—A City of Bells. Goudge wrote this novel as inspired by the scenery and soul of a magical cathedral city that contains a street built in the 14th century, a Bishop’s Palace surrounded by a moat, and swans that ring a bell for their food. Goudge’s novel is the touching story about a variety of people—a wounded soldier, a poor poet, a beautiful actress, and a couple of orphan children—who find a safe haven near an old and venerable faith community.
With beautiful autumn and winter scenes, A City of Bells is a great book to warm us up the Christmas season, and especially because we will then read its sequel, Sister of the Angels, in December as our Christmas book! We will finish the last book of the series, Henrietta’s House, in February 2025.
I will be sharing setting photos, book quotes, characters and scenes all month here in posts, and we will enjoy discussing it together on Zoom the last Tuesday afternoon (3PM EST) of the month (due to US Thanksgiving). Hope you can join us!
Get your copy
You can get your book, A City of Bells, in paperback from Hodder Books.
Find the two Henrietta books, Sister of the Angels and Henrietta’s House, for the best price from their small publisher, Girls Gone By Publishers. (It would be a good idea to order soon so that you can join us in December & February.)
Hope you can join us for all the Goudge novels and children’s books still coming up in 2024:
“It was a still, warm day after rain, and delicious smells came to Jocelyn through the window, the smell of the gorse and the wallflowers in the cottage gardens, the smell of wood smoke and freshly turned earth and rain-washed grass and fresh beginnings. A pity to be tired of life in such a world, thought Jocelyn. If the old earth could wash herself and begin again so often and so humbly why could not a man do the same?…”
🍂 Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells
Love to hear if you will be reading with us in November, and if you will be reading for the first time, or rereading!
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Yes, I am reading A City of Bells. I haven't read it for awhile so it is nice to do so again. I love the way Jocelyn's future is decided through the rumour that he is opening a book store....just what he really wants, he just isn't admitting it. It is all there waiting for him. This is so like life. We go through dark periods, and then with apparent suddenness we come to a place that we recognise, knowing that it has been waiting for us all along. We meet ourselves there, breaking through into the light after our journey through the maturation that takes place in the darkness. This process is like that of a seed waiting for the light, passing through apparent death, and then rebirth to be what it was made to be...a beautiful flower.
I am trying to read along! I’ve been working on novel revisions that last two months, but I’m nearly finished and am hoping to catch up with City of Bells and your background posts in the next ten days. It’s lovely to be reading Goudge again.😊