Reviewing Elizabeth Goudge's "The Dean's Watch" and "Gentian Hill"

After discovering Elizabeth Goudge through Green Dolphin Street—originally the movie, then reading the book itself—I decided that this was definitely an author whose bibliography I would exhaust. Goudge’s writing is unique, complex, and thoughtful. The plots are secondary to the characters, almost each of which is developed in exquisite (sometimes excruciating) detail. The writing is dense, sometimes dry, and so her books aren’t given to binging several in a row.

As I’ve slowly made my way through her bibliography, I’ve finally made it far enough to start recognizing a pattern. Mentally, I can stack her books in distinctive piles:

There is, of course, the Wow I Can’t Believe This Book Actually Exists It’s Like the Holy Grail of Reading pile, which contains Green Dolphin Street and The Rosemary Tree.

Unfortunately, there is also the I Really Tried to Like This For Your Sake, Elizabeth, But Let’s Be Honest I Don’t pile…God So Loved the World, The Child of the Sea and The White Witch are hesitantly, tentatively placed here. A Book of Comfort is also here, not because I didn’t have parts that I enjoyed, but rather that there was just so much that was dull and humorless and failed to strike any chord with me, that I would forget that I’d even read if I hadn’t written a blog post about it!

Finally, there’s the Elizabeth You Have Betrayed Me pile, where the books are not only “meh” but downright impossible for me to think about with a trace of fondness. It’s a small stack, but one that seems to have a general rule that governs it: the children’s books. That’s right, Little White Horse and I Saw Three Ships. That’s where you belong!

And now I have two more books to add to their respective piles.

Gentian Hill’s dustjacket blurb pretends to be about a Catholic Abbe, a survivor of the French Revolution who lost his wife and child to the sea before he devoted his life to the church. But it’s really about two children: the orphaned boy who (after some suffering that reminded me of Horatio Hornblower) deserted the British Navy and took on the alias Zachary, and the little girl Stella who lives on a farm with her adopted parents.

There’s a lot to like about this book, but frankly, most of it can be found in other Goudge novels and executed more successfully than here. Gentian Hill’s plot twists are recognizable hundreds of pages away. The symbolism is heavier-handed than I’ve come to expect from Goudge, which was disappointing. And then there’s Stella.

I think the common thread with the Elizabeth You Have Betrayed Me pile selections is how she portrays children. These characters do not match my experience of how kids behave. Either they are brats that I suppose are meant to be “precocious” (this is not confined to Goudge’s writing; I’ve taken to running away fast from any 20^th century book that describes a child character as “precocious”), or they are miniature adults. Stella is of the latter variety, constantly acting like and being described as “womanly”—at the age of 10.

The other problem with Goudge’s children is that they are often falling in love. I’m sure Goudge intended this to be romantic in a “childhood sweethearts” type of way, but it usually comes across as sort of gross, especially to my modern eyes. It might have been forgivable if she’d only employed this plot device once, but instead, she has used it in Green Dolphin Street, The White Witch, A Child of the Sea, and now Gentian Hill.

And, if those reasons weren’t enough to land Gentian Hill in the betrayal pile, she kills off an animal character. NOT NICE, ELIZABETH.

Anyway, let’s move on to a different and better book. The Dean’s Watch has a bratty child in it, but she’s so young that she’s practically a prop. As I first began to read this, my heart sank. It opens with a clockmaker fixing a literal watch, belonging to the Dean of the city.

“Oh, I thought this was going to be about the shy Dean coming to grips with how he can serve his community, you know, like a neighborhood watch,” I said to myself. (“I really need to stop reading those dust jackets,” I added since this is what had given me the idea in the first place.)

However, as I continued, I found to my delight that this was also the case and that the title has a double meaning. In reality, the dust jacket once again was inadequate only in that it failed to explain that this story was about the unlikely friendship of the atheist clockmaker and the devout Dean.

Physically, personally, and spiritually, the two are polar opposites: the clockmaker is a shrinking, artistic, but fundamentally bitter man, while the Dean comes across as gruff and intimidating because of his large physique coupled with poor hearing and eyesight, despite being a sensitive and shy man inside. A chance misunderstanding leads the two to meet and serves as a catalyst that changes both their lives and ripples out to touch the lives of a wide cast of characters around them.

Of the two, The Dean’s Watch had a more bittersweet ending, but it was also infinitely more satisfying. Where Gentian Hill hinges on trite plot twists and a “destined love” (that seems so much less romantic because the characters don’t seem to have free will to choose to love each other!), The Dean’s Watch is about how small acts of kindness sometimes takes a great deal of courage, and how one person can change the lives of those around them in unexpected ways.