A Book And Its Cover

I'm a long-time fan of Elizabeth Goudges's novels. I own and have read and re-read most of them -- Green Dolphin Street, The Rosemary Tree, The Scent of Water, The White Witch, The Child from the Sea, to name a few. Some are historical; others were contemporary -- the Eliot family saga is set in the thirties and forties. I read them as much for the lush descriptions as for the stories -- which are fairly romantic -- though these are a long way from "romance novels," (said she, drawing her skirts aside.)

So imagine my chagrin when the paperback above showed up among the older books I'd requested for my birthday. I'd asked my husband to get me a copy of Goudge's first novel, written in 1934. I'd never read Island Magic and was thrilled at the thought of a new Elizabeth Goudge to read. (And having just typed that, I wonder if my choice of Elizabeth Goodweather as a name was influenced by my long-time admiration for another E. G.?)

I digress. The book is long out of print and a hardback copy costs eighty to ninety dollars. I'm not a Collector; I'm a reader, so what I got was a mass-market paperback reprint -- which originally sold for ninety-five cents but was available now -used -- for 11.95. Plus shipping and handling.

But the cover! Oh my goodness, the cover! If I'd been in a public place, I'd have had to hide it, it is so much Not the Sort of Book I read.

Except that Island Magic isn't at all like that. The cover portrays a single, never repeated moment -- the book is more about family and children and love and sacrifice than Romance. I suppose the cover was a marketing decision.

Also among my reading pleasures are the novels of Angela Thirkell -- who is a kind of Twentieth Century Jane Austen. Here's another example of marketing choosing covers without reading the book. This dramatic wench in blue bears no resemblance to anyone in the book, which is peopled by a lovely clutch of hard-working, somewhat shabby aristocrats and upper class Brits, as well as a smattering of the lower classes in all their cheerful variety.

Recently, thank goodness, the Thirkell books have all been reprinted in elegant trade paperbacks with covers taken from paintings -- much more suitable. And I don't have to hide the covers.

Now here is a perfect match of cover and book. This reprint of Stella Gibbons' hilarious spoof sports a cover by the incomparable Roz Chast. Only she could do justice to the quirky denizens of Cold Comfort Farm.

If ever you were made to suffer through Thomas Hardy's gloomier works of life and death and misery in the English countryside, this will take the nasty taste away! And if you remember the purpler part of D.H. Lawrence's prose, in which all of nature is tumescent and waxing and burgeoning, well, Cold Comfort Farm should give you a reminiscent giggle.