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Margaret J. Anderson (1) (1931–)

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Margaret J. Anderson (1) has been aliased into Margaret Jean Anderson.

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Juridisk navn
Anderson, Margaret Jean
Fødselsdato
1931
Køn
female

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One day, Marjorie Malcolm-Scott meets Shona McInnes in the park. They are both orphans, but while Shona lives in an orphanage, Marjorie lives with her Uncle Fergus in a rich part of Edinburgh. The girls become friendly enough to exchange identities when they are sent away to escape the bombings. Shona is being sent to the Scottish countryside with the students from her school. Marjorie is bound for Canada to live with relatives. Frightened of the sea voyage, Marjorie convinces Shona to trade places with her. They vow to meet at the park after the war. Marjorie and another orphan, Anna, go to live with the Miss Coopers in Canonbie. Years pass as the war rages throughout Europe. Marjorie's first life slips away, and she becomes Shona McInnes from Canonbie, Scotland. She thrives under the tender care of her guardians. At the end of the war, Marjorie passes the entrance exams to Edinburgh University. The only blight on her happiness is the deception she's lived under all these years. She must go back to the park and find the real Shona. Only then will she be free to live her own life.
©2024 Kathy Maxwell at https://bookskidslike.com
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Markeret
kathymariemax | 1 anden anmeldelse | Feb 7, 2024 |
I'd thought this was the first volume of a trilogy of YA time-travel novels; when it arrived, I discovered it was the third. Damn. Earlier vols are now on order from my long-suffering library . . .

After a collapse of civilization because of climate change, a gentle tribe makes their way from fiery southern zones to settle in what was once the west of Scotland. Now, in AD2179, the girl Lara Avara must establish herself in a world newly rent by an invasion of the Barbaric Ones, who carry much of the tribe -- Lara Avara not included -- off to slavery somewhere further south on the British mainland. The tribe has long held a nearby stone circle in reverence; and it proves that, buried underground where it looks as if there are stones missing from the ring, there are menhirs that have the special property, when handled by sensitives, of opening up time portals -- either for viewing or even for travel. Through such a portal into Lara Avara's time come a pair of 20th-century children, Jennifer and Robert, who bring their own further complications to the future world. All is eventually resolved, of course.

This is a very nicely written book, and I much enjoyed reading it. (I was puzzled, though, by how Robert's and Jennifer's speech was instantly comprehensible by the 22nd-century folk while the speech of the Barbaric Ones was just so much gibberish to them. Surely the two modern dialects would have been closer to each other than to one separated from them by a gulf of 200 years?)

No real mechanism for time travel is offered beyond that it's Yer Mystic. However, there's an interesting notion which, although eventually it's cast aside, shouldn't go unmentioned. Robert is a farmer's son, and his dad is making him follow in the family profession even though the youth really wants to be a painter, and is good at it. A solution to his dilemma is offered: one Robert could remain here in the future, complete with artistic ability and zeal; while another could exist in the 20th century stripped of all painterly yearnings. I can't remember having come across this idea before -- that time travel could be used to allow individuals to fulfil two separate life-plans, as it were. As I say, Anderson discards the concept soon enough, possibly because it'd have brought unwanted complications into her tale; the right decision, but on the other hand a pity.

I'm looking forward to reading the other titles in the series.
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Markeret
JohnGrant1 | Aug 11, 2013 |
American 10-year-old Elizabeth and her parents come to live in a small cottage in the west of England so her dad can do research in Hardy Country. Elizabeth is unsettled by it all. One day on a walk through the nearby wild woods she and her mother come across a pair of ancient derelict cottages. When Elizabeth returns there on her  own later she discovers that, far from derelict, the cottages are athrob with life; further, the forest around them is far thicker than she remembers it being before . . .

She eventually discovers that she has timeslipped back to 1871. There is a 10-year-old living in one of the cottages, Ann, and Ann alone of all her family knows that Elizabeth is there watching. When Elizabeth impulsively touches Ann, her identity flows into the other girl, and she is able to spend some time as a not-entirely-passive observer of Ann's life before running back through the wild woods and into the present. Needless to say, when she gets home she finds she hasn't been gone long.

Several times more Elizabeth journeys into the past to spend extended periods living within Ann's life. Finally, though, Ann's baby brother dies and Ann herself falls ill -- and, it seems certain, will soon join him. She chooses as a better option than this to come into the present and let her selfness flow into Elizabeth, the way Elizabeth's has so often flowed into her. For the rest of Elizabeth's life Ann will be, as it were, at the back of her mind.

This is an extraordinarily charming tale, and in both telling and subtlety of concept an advance on Anderson's earlier In the Keep of Time. I do hope some wise publisher somewhere has the sense soon to bring it back into print; at the moment used copies are commanding moderately high prices on Amazon. (I was able to obtain my reading copy solely through New Jersey's inter-library loan system, shortly to be axed at the behest of NJ Governor Chris Christie, who's cutting the state's library budget by a completely insane 74%.)
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Markeret
JohnGrant1 | Aug 11, 2013 |
Stories about the experimental entomology of Henri Fabre, a contemporary of Darwin. Told from the perspective of his young son, Paul, who assisted his father with his investigations as a child.
 
Markeret
beckydj | Mar 31, 2013 |

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Værker
14
Medlemmer
340
Popularitet
#70,096
Vurdering
4.2
Anmeldelser
6
ISBN
51
Sprog
3

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