In the Spirit of Thankfulness

********** TIME'S UP! *************

I'LL ANNOUNCE THE WINNERS ON MONDAY.

THANKS FOR PARTICIPATING!

In the spirit of thankfulness (for you, my blog readers) and in honor of the fact that I finally posted my Forty Favorite Fiction book list, I decided to give away some of my favorite books. I've ended up with duplicate copies of a few for one reason or another. Surely a handful of my readers might enjoy receiving a book (or four) in the mail. No?

Three lucky winners will receive a vintage copy of The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick.

This obscure book, published in 1924, found its way into my top ten for some inexplicable reason. It is not a children's book. It does not have an adventurous plot. It deals with some mature content (though beautifully, in my humble opinion).

Alix, the French girl, is fifteen or sixteen when she is sent away from her home and mother in France to live in the English countryside with a family she has never before met. Removed from everything she has known and loved and thrust into a new life, Alix becomes her own person, full of observations and reflections of that around her.

As she awakens to adulthood, Alix is left with a blind spot. She cannot see her mother in any other context than that of an adoring daughter. Her new-found friend and kindred spirit, Giles, gently helps her come to terms with the truth about her mother.

The Little French Girl is beautifully written, introspective, and filled with picturesque descriptions of characters and sights in both France and England. I may be the only person who loves this book (or possibly has even heard of it, for that matter), but there you have it--one of my all-time favorite novels.

(If anyone has read, or happens to read this book in the near future, could you please let me know what you think of it? I'd love to hear/read another review!)

For the grand give-away, one winner will receive The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick (vintage copy), From Jest to Earnest by E. P. Roe (vintage copy), A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

To enter, leave a comment on this post and share a book title (or two, or three) from your top ten favorites.

Make sure you include your email address or a link to your blog so that I may contact you if you win! This contest will end on Friday, November 21st (midnight, Pacific time) and I will announce the winner some time on Monday, November 24th.

I leave you with a small taste of The Little French Girl:

pg 5

They were kind women; but very ugly. Like jugs. All the people that she had seen since landing on this day of grey and purple flesh-tones had made her think of the earthenware jugs that old Marthe used to range along her upper shelves in the little dark shop that stood on the turn of the road leading down from the chateau to the village. Their eyes were joyless yet untragic. Their clothes expressed no enterprise. She did not think that they could feel ecstasy, ever, or despair.

pg 11

But it was as if, from the earliest age, she had had, as it were, to be happy round the corner. One's heart was there, aching, if one looked at it; and one tiptoed away cautiously...

pg 50

"She is like someone in a tower." So she tried to fix her feeling.

"Even in a tower one may oneself be insignificant," said Maman, and to this Alix had replied: "Not if one is the tower oneself."

pg 65

He had a tall head and a meditative eye; but there was something of the sheep in his appearance, too. If he had had the close curled wig, that went with his type he would, Alix thought, have looked very like a silent, dignified sheep that may, in the meadow, as it looks at you, emit once or twice a formal baa.

pg 238

"You think of yourself as very strong" he said suddenly..."You think you can do as you like with life. You're not afraid of life; and that's rather splendid of you--if I may say so. But it's never occurred to you to be afraid of yourself. And the time might come, you know, when you'd be carried away, too."