I hope you managed to get a good rest and feel better now, busy+stressful weeks are exhausting. A three-day weekend sounds excellent, and so do nature walks and reading and blackberries! <3
"South Riding" sounds very good (I have added it, along with "The crowded street", to my infinite to-read list)
And heh, even as a slow reader, I usually read "The snow goose" in one sitting too ;) The nature stuff is really lovely, isn't it? I also feel it would have been better if the romance had not been expressly there, and if it had just stayed as a friendship bond (but, to be fair, I feel this about 99.9% of romance content in books) I think the isolated feel and lack of context might come from it trying to be a "legend" (Gallico liked doing that in his writing--for example, he has a whole novel inspired in the Gibraltar monkeys legend) *but* he is a bit better at social context and different types of characters in other books, so it could have also worked here, and it would have been interesting to read. Maybe he was satisfied with the humane context, and the idea of an outcast finding a place to belong, and ultimately sacrificing himself for it?
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"South Riding" sounds very good (I have added it, along with "The crowded street", to my infinite to-read list)
And heh, even as a slow reader, I usually read "The snow goose" in one sitting too ;) The nature stuff is really lovely, isn't it? I also feel it would have been better if the romance had not been expressly there, and if it had just stayed as a friendship bond (but, to be fair, I feel this about 99.9% of romance content in books) I think the isolated feel and lack of context might come from it trying to be a "legend" (Gallico liked doing that in his writing--for example, he has a whole novel inspired in the Gibraltar monkeys legend) *but* he is a bit better at social context and different types of characters in other books, so it could have also worked here, and it would have been interesting to read. Maybe he was satisfied with the humane context, and the idea of an outcast finding a place to belong, and ultimately sacrificing himself for it?