Green Dolphin Street
by Elizabeth Goudge

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Book Reviews of Green Dolphin Street

Book Review: my research on critical reception of gdf
Summary: 5 Stars

Time and the Saturday Review's discussion of the movie version of the book in the book review was not unusual in the reviews, since Green Dolphin Street was published because it had won the MGM Award, and was to be promptly made into a movie. In fact, M. L. Becker, for the Weekly Book Review, wrote of the book, "A right romantic tale set in strange places, not without violence, crowded with real people, it moves from scene to scene through evocations of loveliness explicit as stage directions. To touch but one of them, Midsummer Day on the island provides not only an episode of vivid beauty but a moment such as a star might covet and every young woman in the audience desire."

Beyond the film version, however, the quality of the book that most critics seemed to praise was the narrative descriptions that seemed to take on life in the book. William Du Bois wrote for the New York Times, "Most of the punches are telegraphed; like the author's view of life, they seem to come right out of the Victorian hope chest. But the few chapters dealing directly with St. Pierre are alive with beauty and a sense of the pictorial line and poetry of background. Miss Goudge writes from her heart when she describes these islands, as we can see from her fresh-tinted picture of Militia Day and the choosing of a village Flower Queen, or of the picnic that ends with Marguerite's climb to the convent."

The critics also agreed on the result of the moral themes running through the novel. The New Yorker said, "[it] would have been more effective, and certainly more readable, had the author been more willing to let the moral implications of her story speak for themselves." The Times (London) agreed, calling the novel outside of the New Zealand scenes, "an undistinguished mixture of conventional romantic incident and a conventional moral piety." However, the Times adds an admiration for "the author's steady perseverance."

All in all, Green Dolphin Street, to the critics at least, was as the Times put it, "lack[ing] the sterner virtues of good literature," but still enjoyable none the less. (Time referred to the entertainment value of the book with the "tasty as a marshmallow" quote mentioned above.)

SOURCES: From a compilation of book reviews in BOOK REVIEW DIGEST 1944:
1. New York Times September 3, 1944: 5. (William Du Bois)
2. New Yorker September 2, 1944: 20:66.
3. Saturday Review of Literature August 26, 1944: 27:7. (Harrison Smith)
4. Time September 4, 1944. 44:95.
5. Times [London] Literary Supplement November, 18, 1944: 563.
6. Weekly Book Review August 27, 1944: 4. (M. L. Becker)

Subsequent reviews are less prevalent than contemporary reviews for Green Dolphin Street. Elizabeth Goudge's obituary notice, run in the Times (London) on April 3, 1984, and the New York Times on April 27, 1984, calls Green Dolphin Street, "her most famous work," and goes on to describe how it "won a Literary Guild Award and was adapted as a motion picture." Her work is described as "depicting life in British small towns through accurate descriptions of individuals and locations, thus evoking her reader's sympathy for her characters."

Reader's that filled in customer review on Amazon.com seemed to agree with Goudge's obituary. One describes it as "a story of ultimate love, determination, devotion and forgiveness," and adds that it is "powerfully and yet beautifully written."...

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