At the Firefly Gate by Linda Newbery
This was a gentle and touching story which some of us really liked and some of us found a bit frustrating. It’s quite mysterious and we all found it very intriguing and atmospheric in places. Some of us found it very poignant and quite moving. There is a good strong set of distinctive characters and some of the description is very engaging and drew us in with vibrant visual detail. But there seemed to us to be quite a number of blind alleys in the story. What was the point of the visit to the airfield? Why was it important for Henry to go to the village school for a day? Why was it simply accepted that Grace was so unpleasant? Although we appreciated that she was secretly in a state about Dotty’s imminent death, we couldn’t quite see why her horrible behaviour was completely ignored by the adults. Above all, why was Dotty killed off before Henry had told her his story? We were puzzled. We thought perhaps this was a book in which real things happened rather than neat story book things – people do die most inconveniently in real life and horrible people do get away with terrible things without anyone noticing – but somehow we felt a bit cheated – or some of us did!
Nonetheless, we did on the whole enjoy this book – it’s puzzling but pleasant and well-written, light and summery and yet thought-provoking and absorbing.
Our next meeting will be on May 18th at 4.15pm and we will be discussing ‘Impossible’ by Nancy Werlin.
