Wednesday, April 24, 2013

2013 read #51: The Borrowers by Mary Norton.

The Borrowers by Mary Norton
180 pages
Published 1952
Read from April 23 to April 24
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

Norton did an excellent job at writing an old-fashioned children's novel. If I didn't make a habit of looking for the publication date before I begin to read these books, I would have pegged The Borrowers to the Edwardian era, or shortly thereafter. There's something proper and mustily charming about the precise descriptions of the borrowers' living arrangements, and naturally the quick, vivid, gently absurd caricatures of servants and bedridden aristocracy seem drawn from a period piece. Coming into this book fully grown, I have to say that on the whole it feels a bit flimsy, but the charm lies in the details -- in, if I were inclined to make an unworthy pun, in the little things.

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