LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 416, 13 June 1947, Page 9

LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY

NUTS IN THE ROOKERY. By Mathena Blomefield. Faber and Faber Ltd. HOUGH this book was written for children, though it is itself a chronicle of childhood, and though there are in it mary passages which might be tread with delight by those in the Standard 1V-V age-bracket, it is qa tale which will appeal most strongly to those whose memories preserve the same green places as the author’s. As the story of Mrs. Blomefield’s own childhood on a Norfolk farm in the eighties it is so far distant both in time and space that children and perhaps Norfolk children more than others) would find it quite unbelievable as a story of real life. Of course, it is not real life, but the unspoiled wonderland to which we awake from infancy, where everything (except washing and going to bed) is magic and exciting. Through this wonderland walks Nessel-Mrs. Blomefield’s recollection of herself-a rather prim little girl whose seriousness and self-possession suggest something of the original Alice. Of life as seen through the eyes of ‘a child, Mrs. Blomefield has retained an awareness that many a younger writer will envy. Her descriptions of farm and country, and of the cycle of the seasons, are in their way as particular and detailed as anything by Gilbert White. But the language in which they are presented is so artificial and old-fashioned that one wonders if the author did not, as a child, obey too faithfully the Victorian injunction to be seen and not heard. Nuts in the Rookery is illustrated in black and white by Mildred E. Eldridge, who draws competently but without inspiration.