Mid-Book Discussion: The Bird in the Tree

October Goudge Read-Along 2023, The Eliot Chronicles

The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

“My silly love story isn’t really important, and at one time I had not meant to tell it, but the conclusions one comes to about living are important. They mold our lives, and sometimes other people’s lives too…”

Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree

We’ve come to the turning point of the novel and finally get to meet the infamous Nadine. She certainly is set in getting what pleases her, but I think we also see how she does wish to love her children, however imperfectly. And even Lucilla does not blame Nadine for being “blinded by the sparks” caused by her own beauty.

Through these sections, we see deeper into the humanity of each of Goudge’s characters and she enables us to see things from their perspectives while also seeing their blind spots:

“It was that declaration of Nadine’s that she wanted ‘to live her own life,’ that had exasperated Lucilla beyond anything else… It was a remark frequently on the lips of the modern generation, she knew, and it annoyed her. For whose lives, in the name of heaven, could they live except their own? Everyone must look after something in this world and why were they living their own lives if they looked after antique furniture, petrol pumps or parrots, and not when they looked after husbands, children or aged parents?”

Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree