The Uncle is a pompous bore, who hates children and only tolerates them for the sake of appearances, The Aunt is kind but she is terrified as a mouse of her husband.
Rescued by a British Lord, they are taken to live with the father's brother. Having lived a gypsy-type life with their Polish mother and British father, who ran away from his stiff upper-lip family to pursue a career as a painter, three children are devastated when all their living European relatives are killed in an earthquake in Turkey. Melodrama! Oh, the poor, poor orphans! This isn't quite up to par with Streatfeild's best writing but is still a decent, if over dramatic, tale of orphans who overcome tragedy. It didn't feel as if it fit with the rest of the book.But other than that, it's excellent - and a little more thought-provoking than others by this author. There are some dramatic events in the last couple of chapters, then suddenly all problems are solved in a 'deus ex machina' way in about two pages. My only criticism of the book is that it ends very abruptly. The story moves along rapidly and I enjoyed it very much.
But that's not a bad thing in a book intended for this agegroup. The book revolves around the children's gradual adaptation to British life, and also Anna's persistence in needing to find ballet classes and a teacher who will take her seriously.As ever with this author's work, the children are delightful - a mixture of good and bad, responsible and irresponsible - and the adults rather caricatured. Unfortunately they disapprove of dancing, yet Anna is determined to be a ballet dancer. This book is about three children - Francesco, Gussie and Anna - who are taken from Eastern Europe to England to live with their Aunt and Uncle.
0 kommentar(er)
