The Princess and Curdie [#books #reviews]

by George MacDonald

Princess Irene and Curdie
← The Princess and the Goblin

Rating: 8/10

There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection.

(Page 13)

I discovered George MacDonald by chance, from a gift I received during my childhood, The Princess and the Goblins, which I had loved a lot as a child and that I had equally appreciated rereading it as an adult. I later discovered that MacDonald is a fantasy author considered an important inspiration by many names more famous than him (for example C.S. Lewis and a certain J. R. R. Tolkien).

This second book with the same characters is a very nice novel, apart from a few details I really enjoyed reading it, but I can't deny that I liked it a bit less than the first one!

Quotes

Curdie was the son of Peter the miner.

[incipit]

A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them—and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.

(Page 4)

Why do people talk about going downhill when they begin to get old? It seems to me that then first they begin to go uphill.

Peter

(Page 46)

It revealed a bare garret room, nothing in it but one chair and one spinning wheel. He closed it, and opened the next—to start back in terror, for he saw nothing but a great gulf, a moonless night, full of stars, and, for all the stars, dark, dark!—a fathomless abyss. He opened the third door, and a rush like the tide of a living sea invaded his ears. Multitudinous wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and, like the ascending column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot into the air, darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and then, with a sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew northward, swiftly away, and vanished.

(Page 126)

It was a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men.

(Page 134)