Crusoe's Daughter

I loved this book for its eccentricity and for the life described in it. Polly Flint is a year older than the century, and experiences the losses so common in the 20th century. Her parents from illness, her relatives too, her lovers because of war, yet she keeps going, after she gives up the whisky that threatens to derail her. I found all the characters quite convincing, and loved the almost Dickensian fee to the book, which reminded me in some ways of Great Expectations. A satisfying read.

Jane Gardam evokes an entire world in the heart, mind and soul of Polly Flint, who became Robinson Crusoe’s intellectual daughter in the remote, wind-driven marshes and sand flats of northeastern England, during the years between the First and the Second World War. The reader’s patience with the occasionally slow cadence of this novel is well rewarded eventually, with several surprises.

Jane Gardam is a scintillating writer. Her characters live their strange lives "as if a skin had been peeled off everything," to borrow an metaphor from Crusoe's Daughter. Every sentence shimmers.Published in 1986, Crusoe's Daughter is not much read today. A sad oversight that would not have surprised the heroine of the novel, Polly Flint. Repeatedly abandoned, she felt as isolated as her literary hero, Robinson Crusoe, for much of her life.We meet Polly in 1904 at age six, left by her sea captain father with two maiden aunts in an improbably Italianate yellow house on a salt marsh in the north of England.One aunt is vague and holy, the other warmhearted and conflicted. There's also an unexplained woman living in the house, penniless and peculiar, who teaches young Polly German and French. Polly completes her education by reading the hundreds of books in the family library.This is very much a book about books, and readers with a literary bent will like this. Others might not. Robinson Crusoe is Polly's bible, illuminating human nature and the cruelties of existence.(I wonder if Gardam was inspired by Betteredge in The Moonstone. Wilkie Collins' quintessential butler also frequently consults Robinson Crusoe for guidance.)We follow Polly's life through two world wars and beyond. Her story mirrors the fate of England, forever changed by war and by progress.Crusoe's Daughter abounds in thwarted romances and heated literary discussions. Loveable and unlovable eccentrics, appealing servants, absurd artists, self-absorbed lovers and Polly herself in love, in despair or in recovery, wend their way through a plot full of perplexities - all ultimately clarified.I wasn't happy with the last chapter, which felt self-conscious and superfluous to me. I'm simply overlooking it in giving this book five stars.

Gardam is one of my favorites - I got interested in her after "Old Filth" and it's successor "The Man with the Wooden Hat" and this book was up to my expectations. She is enigmatic, throwing something out there and letting you find it's significance later, and otherwise not inclined to make the reader comfortable (sent me to the dictionary about a dozen times in this book -I was glad to be reading it on my Kindle for quick look-up).So it's not an "English Cozy" and not really a suspenseful plot. What it is - a carefully crafted study of human nature battling against the odds of unusual circumstance - a young girl extracted from her environment after the death of her mother and placed with her two eccentric aunts on a British Isle. There is some humor and relief when she is transported to a relative's large, luxurious home which is a residential facility for gifted artists. There the eccentricities abound with great fun.We follow the protagonist to the end of her days where she is living in the old yellow house by the sea that she inherited from her aunts. She bounced from the efforts to indoctrinate her into religion, learned about love & sex with such candid observations that are also humorous. I recommend this book.

First, full disclosure. I love Jane Gardam and think her Old Filth trilogy should be required reading. With Crusoe's Daughter she carefully tracks a woman's life, capturing it's wealth beneath an apparent drab surface. The book opens near the beginning of the 20th century when Polly Flint, age 6, is left by her father "The Captain" with her maiden aunts, who live in a yellow house on the edge of a Marsh in Northern England. Her young life to that point has been chaotic and dismal, marked by harsh flashes of memories laden with sex and violence, which she chooses to forget. She hardly knows her father, who is typically out at sea, but his brief appearances have been the few happy moments up until the time she is left at her aunts'. Unfortunately, her father dies in a shipwreck within a few months and Polly remains at the yellow house for the rest of a life relieved only by one long visit to the home of an eccentric couple and two glimpses of romance. These are the footprints of the life she might have followed but chose instead to maroon herself on an emotional island inhabited by the words and experiences of Robinson Crusoe, the father she adopts, who did not die at sea but survived to guide his daughter throughout her life. Do not let this summary discourage you. It is not a book about isolation. It is a compelling novel, filled with wonderful characters, whose underlying mysteries are colored with the sorrow and comedy that marks all our lives, and which Polly Flint and Crusoe direct from her island. It's a wonderful story with a satisfying conclusion.

Jane Gardam is a wonder, word following word to create a world, new and old, visionary and nostalgic and back again. Extraordinarily lucid and crisp and lovely and no nonsense.

Oh I loved this story.Jane Gardam writes about human emotions so very well. I always shed a tear (or more) when I read her work.The characters are well drawn, mainly English eccentrics, who fascinate me, coming from a European background as I do.The reverse snobbery by Mrs Zeit, (after she realises her son has an interest in Polly) is so, so cruel.I wish I could understand Theo more though, as I am not sure if he alone used Polly, or if his family had a hand in all of his undertakings. Even the last, as Polly by then had his daughters living with her. It hurts me to think what heartache she went through.Polly's love of & fascination with Robinson Crusoe is quite wonderful & shows what reading can do to a child's mind. Particularly, an only child, & more particularly still, an orphan child being brought up in the circumstances Polly finds herself in. I say 'Brava' to that.However, those circumstances made Polly quite naive, so much so that even as a young adult woman, she did not realise a man, a poet, had been in love with her.I also loved the 'twist' involving her great grandmother, aunt, uncle etc. What secrets families have!All in all, a very touching story, which I feel privileged to have read.

Polly Flint - a great name, and a fascinating heroine.Polly, orphaned, grows up with her aunts in "Oversands" - a yellow house on the North East Coast of England around the turn of the last century. She is clothed, fed, by her aunts, educated by a lodger, but love and warmth are missing. She becomes absorbed by the books in her late grandfathers study, and especially with the story of Robinson Crusoe.In many ways, Crusoes shipwrecked state, and her own isolation are linked. The writing is absorbing, subtle and witty. I really cared about Polly and felt her passions and disappointments. The landscape of the North East, and in Yorkshire are beautifully described, and the characters intriguing.I would really recommend this book - it is refreshing and compelling. I had not read any of Jane Gardam's books before, but will do now.

I’m new to Jane Gardam and this was an enjoyable introduction to her work, very atmospheric story in terms of central character, landscape and the roles of women of limited means before and between the wars.

I enjoyed this book, having recently discovered Jane Gardam's short stories which I enjoyed. She is very persceptive about children and childhood and about family relationships. I did find the story rather hard to believe, and there are slightly too many coincidences, especially leading up to the sort of happy ending. However, it is a good and untaxing read, and the historical and geographical detail is interesting.

This is a book which infuriates as the characters do not behave in any way in which you can relate to them. Polly Flint is most odd but likeable and her life whilst hard and even harder to imagine is interesting. I could not stop reading and went back to reread several sections.