Green Dolphin Country [Paperback]

Before reading Green Dolphin Street I had seen the film as a teenager. At that age what primarily interested me was the spectacular earthquake sequence and the tidal wave. Although the movie version followed quite well the novel, as is usually the case, the novel was unequivocally better than the movie. It tells an old-fashioned tale, set in the mid-nineteenth century, of unrequited love, mistaken identity and spiritual redemption.One could even argue that there is the element of women's liberation in the character of Marianne who envies the freedom and self-determination males have and seeks to achieve her own by moulding the character of the man she marries. By way of contrast her sister Marguerite never marries the man she loves because of a cruel twist of fate and eventually becomes a nun believing that this vocation is what has been ordained for her since the beginning of time. If you are a cynic or one who considers predictability a literary demerit, you will probably not get farther than 50 of the 500 plus pages of this book. But if you are not too jaded by modern fiction replete with gratuitous sex and violence, go along with Elizabeth Goudge and Marianne who leave their home in the Channel Islands on a precipitous voyage to New Zealand where they find adventure and a good life.

Interestingly, like Elizabeth Goudge's first novel, "Island Magic", her only run-away best-seller "Green Dolphin Country", is also based on an intriguing event in the lives of her Guernsey Island ancestors.
(She explains this in her fascinating autobiographical memoir "The Joy of Snow"!)
Her maternal grandfather's brother found himself in trouble, and escaped to a kind of exile in the antipodes.
When he began to prosper he wrote back to the island to propose to his childhood sweetheart.
But, with a Goudgeian poor memory for names, in his letter he proposed to the older sister of the girl he loved.
When she finally arrived to marry him he was agonised, but he never told her.

What may seem far-fetched in this rich romantic novel, actually happened, and knowing this makes the book all the more readable.

On an epic scale, the novel tells of the lives of two sisters and the man they love, reaching from their childhood home in the Channel Islands to the New Zealand antipodes, and returning full circle to the islands.
Their personalities clash against and counterbalance one another as they each seek for different kinds of personal truth or salvation: longing for a lost home, an Eldorado which somehow always seems just over the horizon; searching for the perfect mate to share life's torments and joys; craving for inner purity and peace.
Like Goudge's contemporary adult novel "The Scent of Water", the story is wild rough romance and religious soul-searching and meditation, mixed like no other writer can.

All of Goudge's novels are "romances" in one important aspect: they hinge on moments of visionary insight for her characters, filled with that romantic longing for a strange beauty and joy which is known in German as "Sehnsucht".
Dreams, glimpses of landscape, moments of weather, the sound of a voice or melody when no one else is present, sudden remembering of lost experience, or a poetry quote which stabs to the heart.
These are frequently counterbalanced against moments of evil, terror, despair, emotional collapse, irrational rage or blinding hate.
Most of her central characters are well educated and intellectually or emotionally gifted, although many are presented as frail, absent-minded, wounded.
Yet not only are they bound up in everyday tasks, they are surrounded by salt-of-the-earth uneducated workers, heroic peasants comparable to the subjects of Hopkins' poems "Felix Randall", "Tom" and "Harry Ploughman", people of utter reliability and ancient Hardyesque virtue.
Her characters' ages may vary from eighty to eight, or even younger.
For Goudge there is little difference between adult and child, except length of experience and acquired knowledge - their interests, emotions and needs are fundamentally the same. In some cases the children show greater maturity than the so called "adults", and even the animals, dogs particularly, owned by her characters show unspoken wisdom which may ironically exceed that of their masters and mistresses.

As a writer, Elizabeth Goudge is unique, and almost universally treasured by her readers.
This is one of her very best!
John Gough -- Deakin University -- jagough49@gmail.com

I read this book when I was in my teens in the early 60's. I was terribly impressed by the story then and over the years I have told my daughter about this good book and have tried to buy it for her, but it went out of print and other than buying it second hand, (which I am not inclined to do) I have been unable to obtain a copy. I have been waiting for it to be reissued ever since. I am not sure whether the story will have withstood the test of time since it was a very different world in the early 60's. I would be very eager to reread this book if ever it were reprinted and pass judgement on it then, but for my last reading I am certainly giving it five stars.

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