Book review
Change:
Helen Humphereys uses a few things to reveal the change on Gwen. During the war, Gwen, a lonely city girl who indulged in horticulture and never want to communicate with people, in Land Girl, which she had to be authoritative to manage the girls, to prevent them form making sex with sodiers on the hill and to assure everything in the garden well, when they were planting potatoes, learned to love and expose her feelings to others, and never regarded the book sent by my mother as sexual character. As for to the lighthouse, the book which was written by a admired author Virginia Woolf, was a person who resolved the problem caused by Gwen and a friend who accompanied with her, but became a special bond of love between Jane and David and given to Raley as a loving gift when Gwen had become more mature. It reveals a altering in a girl’s mind with the war, the world and human beings.
Confuse:
Gwen’s confuse about war is exhibited by the change of attitude to Virginia Woolf. When she first went to Devon and the Paddington station, she saw the news about Virginia Woolf, and she held a great expectation that she was just missing rather than died. In the first letter, Gwen still had the great mood about the great days in London where is complex but suited for her. Few months later, Virginia Woolf died. With the constant three letters, Gwen showed a negative attitude about Virginia Woolf, and she said she can feel the strong link to London when she heard the bird song in the last letter. At the beginning, Gwen did not have some feeling about the war, and she just felt sad leaving London and her beautiful Garden, because of nonconnection and loneliness. But living in the life of Devon, she perceived the war, the hatred, the danger and the sadness.
Love
Gwen did not have love experience which she first feel it in Devon: as for Raley, she was always appreciate his body and strong arms and observed a strange feeling (close to love but not enough)of him, when she finally had chance to say I love you after Raley kissed her–Raley confessed that he can’t forget the Peter(a childhood friend who died in the war). The secret love in that time disappeared in the snowy of the forests, blowed away with the wind taken by German bombs and hidden deeply in sodier’s heart. She thought about the longing love in the garden, which Frank would not to tell, when Thomas, Samuel and William went to the war, the same love disappeared in the battle. Finally, she may aware the true love, as Jane died in her arms, when Gwen heard the murmur of wind across jane’s skin, when she touched her cold back, Jane will remember, Gwen will remember the story is not only about death, is about love.
- Goodreads rating – 3.82
- REVIEW – Allen