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The Garden of the Plynck
Excerpt from The Garden of the Plynck
It is certainly an underhand way of suggesting that you stop doing something pleasant, or begin doing something unpleasant; and you would not have thought that Sara's dear mother would have had so unworthy a habit. But a stern regard for the truth compels me to admit that she had.
You see, Sara's dear mother was, indeed, most dear; but very self willed and contrary. Her great fault was that she was always busy at something. She would dam, and she would write, and she would read dark-colored books without pictures. When Sara compared her with other mothers of her acquaintance, or when this very contrary own mother went away for a day, she seemed indeed to Sara quite desper ately perfect. But on ordinary days Sara was darkly aware, in the clearest part of her mind - the upper right-hand corner near the window - that her mother, with all her charm, really did need to be remoulded nearer to her heart's desire.
She was especially clear about this on the frequent occasions when she would come into the room where her mother was sitting, and plump down upon a chair with a heart-tending sigh, and say, I wish I had somebody to play with!
For then her dear but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and remark, with a calm smile.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
It is certainly an underhand way of suggesting that you stop doing something pleasant, or begin doing something unpleasant; and you would not have thought that Sara's dear mother would have had so unworthy a habit. But a stern regard for the truth compels me to admit that she had.
You see, Sara's dear mother was, indeed, most dear; but very self willed and contrary. Her great fault was that she was always busy at something. She would dam, and she would write, and she would read dark-colored books without pictures. When Sara compared her with other mothers of her acquaintance, or when this very contrary own mother went away for a day, she seemed indeed to Sara quite desper ately perfect. But on ordinary days Sara was darkly aware, in the clearest part of her mind - the upper right-hand corner near the window - that her mother, with all her charm, really did need to be remoulded nearer to her heart's desire.
She was especially clear about this on the frequent occasions when she would come into the room where her mother was sitting, and plump down upon a chair with a heart-tending sigh, and say, I wish I had somebody to play with!
For then her dear but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and remark, with a calm smile.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
- GenresFantasy
123 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2026
This lost children's fantasy novel (by a prolific woman Texan novelist/poet) is in the vein of "Alice in Wonderland", but deeply weird and original. Told by her mother to "go play inside her mind," the main character Sara does, passing through ivory doors with damask curtains (!!), and into the garden of the titular Plynck, a sort of woman-headed peacock who converses with her independent reflection (in Plynckese, her Echo) in the water. In this fairyland-candyland, on her repeated visits, Sara meets strange creatures like the Snimmy, the Snoodle, Schlorge and Avrillia (a goddess-like woman who writes poems on rose petals and throws them into the abyss of Nothing), and eventually visits many other adjacent places, including a land of giant caterpillars and butterflies, the Vale of Tears, the regions of Frowns and Laughter, and (in a chapter that might almost be a Lord Dunsany pastiche) the toy city of Zinariola beyond the sea. Full of literalized puns and wordplay, "The Garden of the Plynck" also resembles "The Phantom Tollbooth", but doesn't have that book's quest structure or educational focus; whimsy, not teaching, is the mood. If there's one glaring flaw in this book (and a reason it hasn't been reprinted), it's the Tar-Baby-ish servant character, Yassuh, a reminder of the blatant racism that a conservative white writer born in 1878 might casually put in a book for children. The illustrations by Florence Minard, while not very detailed, help visualize the often extremely weird things described in the text.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review