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A review by crazygoangirl
The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
Mixed feelings about this one!
First published in 1931, this is a tale of the Carne family - primarily of the three sisters, Deidre, Katrina and Sheil who live with their mother and a governess for the youngest daughter Sheil - a Ms. Agatha Martins. The Carne family women have fantastically fertile imaginations and use them as tools to deal with and embellish their routine lives. They have created an entire network of characters based on people they’ve seen but never met and imagined their lives and personalities and invented events and meetings and the like! But one day, imagination comes face to face with reality and chaos and confusion follow, as the girls try to amalgamate the two into a palatable milieu. Meanwhile, the Brontë sisters and their dead father make occasional appearances adding to the confusion!
I don’t really know how to react to this book! I did enjoy it initially, especially the wit and the irony, but Ferguson’s writing style confused me enough that I wasn’t ever quite sure what was imagination and who was real! It made the reading experience less pleasurable than it could have been. There is no definite plot here and I thought the characters were sketched out only with regards to their imaginative and creative faculties - everything seemed fantastical and bizarre and the reasons for these elaborate schemes that the girls dreamt up were never explained. Also I found it hard to believe that the Toddingtons would fall in line so easily and eagerly with these rather bizarre imaginings! The ending too was rather abrupt and it let me feeling like I should have liked the Carnes better than I did 🤷♀️
This a short book at 188 pages which is why I stuck with it. It’s written well and Ferguson does have incisive insights into family dynamics peppered throughout the narrative that kept me going and some great one liners as well. A few examples…
“The house was simply humming with alien personalities.”
“All children, I suppose, are incalculable.”
“The pinch of desolation comes before and afterwards, never at the time.”
“I rather think children sense death as cats and dogs do family departure.”
“I often think that perhaps there is only a limited amount of memory going about the world, and that when it wants to live again, it steals its nest, like a cuckoo.”
I annotated this book while reading and yet I the end, I wasn’t sure what the takeaway was meant to be. I couldn’t see that their imaginations had done the family any particular good. Even their friendship with the Toddingtons in the real world resulted from an event that Deidre attended in her capacity as a a journalist. Imagination is fine, I have a good one myself and indulge it at whim, but Ferguson offered no explanations as to why the girls were so radical in theirs. So although I liked the admittedly clever writing and the one liners, it left me feeling strangely unfulfilled and decidedly unsympathetic toward the Carnes! I felt like I missed the point of the tale, and that’s never satisfying. Perhaps a re-read at a later time will be more illuminating!
First published in 1931, this is a tale of the Carne family - primarily of the three sisters, Deidre, Katrina and Sheil who live with their mother and a governess for the youngest daughter Sheil - a Ms. Agatha Martins. The Carne family women have fantastically fertile imaginations and use them as tools to deal with and embellish their routine lives. They have created an entire network of characters based on people they’ve seen but never met and imagined their lives and personalities and invented events and meetings and the like! But one day, imagination comes face to face with reality and chaos and confusion follow, as the girls try to amalgamate the two into a palatable milieu. Meanwhile, the Brontë sisters and their dead father make occasional appearances adding to the confusion!
I don’t really know how to react to this book! I did enjoy it initially, especially the wit and the irony, but Ferguson’s writing style confused me enough that I wasn’t ever quite sure what was imagination and who was real! It made the reading experience less pleasurable than it could have been. There is no definite plot here and I thought the characters were sketched out only with regards to their imaginative and creative faculties - everything seemed fantastical and bizarre and the reasons for these elaborate schemes that the girls dreamt up were never explained. Also I found it hard to believe that the Toddingtons would fall in line so easily and eagerly with these rather bizarre imaginings! The ending too was rather abrupt and it let me feeling like I should have liked the Carnes better than I did 🤷♀️
This a short book at 188 pages which is why I stuck with it. It’s written well and Ferguson does have incisive insights into family dynamics peppered throughout the narrative that kept me going and some great one liners as well. A few examples…
“The house was simply humming with alien personalities.”
“All children, I suppose, are incalculable.”
“The pinch of desolation comes before and afterwards, never at the time.”
“I rather think children sense death as cats and dogs do family departure.”
“I often think that perhaps there is only a limited amount of memory going about the world, and that when it wants to live again, it steals its nest, like a cuckoo.”
I annotated this book while reading and yet I the end, I wasn’t sure what the takeaway was meant to be. I couldn’t see that their imaginations had done the family any particular good. Even their friendship with the Toddingtons in the real world resulted from an event that Deidre attended in her capacity as a a journalist. Imagination is fine, I have a good one myself and indulge it at whim, but Ferguson offered no explanations as to why the girls were so radical in theirs. So although I liked the admittedly clever writing and the one liners, it left me feeling strangely unfulfilled and decidedly unsympathetic toward the Carnes! I felt like I missed the point of the tale, and that’s never satisfying. Perhaps a re-read at a later time will be more illuminating!