Penn Hackney’s Kindle Notes & Highlights for Linnets and Valerians

Illustration by Lauren Mills

DELICIOUS. Lots of humor and sweetness, and 100% likable characters. Bought for $2 on Easter Sunday (4/17/2022) after reading three other novels by Ms. Goudge, being quite impressed, and not having finished a borrowed hard copy before having to return it. Same pagination. Lovely illustrations by Lauren Mills that were not in the hard copy by Puffin. Deliciously funny. Warmly instructive. Fabulous similes. Elements of the uncanny. Patented Elizabeth Goudge. The children “borrow” a trap and pony who brings them to the home of an elderly gentlemen who “trusted never to set eyes on a child again” we learn has taught boys for 30 years before retiring 5 years ago, who we then learn is the children’s Uncle Ambrose, and then learn he was also the Vicar, and the children get to live in an uncanny vicarage. I wonder why he never married. An example of the many similes: not content with mere description but put immediately to use: “Uncle Ambrose’s terrible bright glance seemed to reach right down into his head like a hook. It groped about there and came up with something.” Or this one: “The two spurs of rock that contained it on each side were both the same shape, like the paws and forearms of a huge beast, and viewed from this side they were not menacing but protective, as though the beast held the garden in his arms.” Lots of uncanny settings and personages and animals - bees, an owl named Hector and a monkey named Abednego for starters. Robert: practical and bumptious; always considering what occupation might pay the most Nan: brave and loving; reads people well Timothy: imaginative and observant; a beautiful smile Betsy: sweet and without guile Chaos on Catnet: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5158367859

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ROBERT

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Betsy

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Timothy

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Nan

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Ab...

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1912,

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the date of this story,

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now ex...

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Haha

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Haha

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Escape.

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She began to think that Robert’s latest idea had not been one of his best, but she did not say so because when an idea has hardened into consequences it is too late to change it for another.

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That is why ideas should never be put into practice the moment you have them. They should be chewed like cud for twenty-four hours.

Simile

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The pony was looking at them over his shoulder and he seemed to like them, for he whinnied softly.

Haha

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‘Borrowing,’ said Robert. ‘There is a difference.’

Haha

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at that moment her loving anxiety to get Timothy and Betsy and Absolom to wherever it was they were going rather got the better of her honesty.

Haha

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‘Rob-Roy.

Also, the Rob Roy is a cocktail consisting primarily of whisky and vermouth, created in 1894 by a bartender at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, New York City. The drink was named in honor of the premiere of Rob Roy, an operetta by composer Reginald De Koven and lyricist Harry B. Smith loosely based upon Scottish folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor: Raibeart Ruadh MacGriogair; 7 March 1671 – 28 December 1734, Scottish outlaw, who later became a folk hero.