Green Knowe Readalong, Week One

Halls of mirrors and the food of our dreams

Hello,

I hope you’ve been enjoying the first third of The Children of Green Knowe. I found it heavenly to read it again - it is just so beautiful and eerily Christmassy (which is the best kind of Christmassy, in my opinion).

Rebecca Armstrong

and I got together to talk about our reading experience so far - I have to warn you, we accidentally wore matching sweaters, for which we can only apologise (although we will now totally be doing it on purpose next week).

We talked about:

• The story so far

• The historical context of the book

• The subtle magic of Granny Oldknow

• The themes of water, generational repetition and mirrors

• How much we want to butter our hands to attract birds

• The most perfect fireside tea EVER.

Please tell us what you think in the comments! Are you new to the book, or is this a re-read? What do you think of Tolly and Granny Oldknow? Would you like to live in Green Knowe? And would Linnet possibly be a tiny bit annoying in real life?

Most of all, did anyone download and use my bookmark?!

Here’s a clip from our conversation (in which there is lots of cake chat), plus the transcript. Paid Subscribers can find the full recording further down.

Transcript Children Of Green Knowe Readalong, Week One

244KB ∙ PDF file

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Coming up next:

Week 2 - Wednesday 11th December

To read in advance: From Toby’s Story through to the end of Linnet’s story (pp. 50 - 104 in my edition).

Tolly finally gets to meet the children, and we learn about Toby’s horse Feste, and Linnet’s encounter with St Christopher.