Land of Green Ginger (Portway Reprints) [Hardcover]

Winifred Holtby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1968 | Series: Portway Reprints

Joanna Burton was born in South Africa but sent by her missionary father to be raised in Yorkshire. There she dreams of the far-off lands she will visit and adventures to come. At eighteen, tall and flaxen-haired, she meets Teddy Leigh, a young man on his way to the trenches of the First World War. Joanna has been in love before - with Sir Walter Raleigh, with the Scarlet Pimpernel, with Coriolanus - but this is different. Teddy tells her he’s been given the world to wear as a golden ball. Joanna believes him and marries him, but the fabled shores recede into the distance when, after the war, Teddy returns in ill health. The magic land turns out to be the harsh reality of motherhood and life on a Yorkshire farm. Yet still she dares to dream.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Winifred Holtby (1898–1935) was a journalist, critic, feminist, pacifist, and novelist. She won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize with South Riding, her last novel.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: C.Chivers; New edition edition (December 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0855942061
• ISBN-13: 978-0855942069
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overlooked Talent, December 13, 2001

By 

Rivkah Maccaby "Rivkah Maccaby" (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Land of Green Ginger (Cassandra Editions) (Paperback)

This is a beautiful book, which I'm afraid will get lost in the exorcism of European presence in South Africa. As terrible as Apartheid is and was, a few individual stories should not get lost in the shuffle: among them are The Story of an African Farm, The Flame Trees of Thika, and The Land of Green Ginger.

Joanna is a young woman of English heritage, born in Africa, against whom circumstances conspire to deliver back to England. But Africa, and specifically the land of green ginger is forever with her, and she never quite fits into slow-paced English society. She has an adventuresome spirit that her purely English provincial neighbors perceive as not quite ladylike.

In the beginning, when Joanna is young, she is unaware of how she comes across, and the beauty of Holtby's writing is her ability to communicate the charm and spirit of Joanna to the reader so that the reader finds her appealing, and at the same time, with the same actions, show her time after time committing minor faux pas that make the neighbors wary of her.

Eventually, Joanna realizes just how much she doesn't fit in, and she longs more and more for Africa. She has married a man who shared her longing for something outside of provincial England, but was struck with tuberculosis. She has had two children, and because of her husband's illness, bares almost sole responsibilty for them. By this time we have come to love Joanna, and are rapt, hoping with her to find some way out of the English fog into the African sun, and a happier life for her children. Each step toward or back from Africa is an emotional jolt for the reader, and the end is a long sigh; as we close the book-- or at least as I did, a whispered "Amen."

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Doomed to confusion, July 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Land of Green Ginger (Cassandra Editions) (Paperback)

Poor Ms. Holtby must be sick to death of her book being confused with the even more out of print Noel Langley's Land of Green Ginger. I don't see Pelican reprinting the latter any time soon - it may be a little bit politically incorrect these days with it's silly proper names for characters from various ethnic groups.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Winifred Holtby has become one of my new favorite authors..., December 5, 2010

By 

K. Huff (Radnor, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Land of Green Ginger (Cassandra Editions) (Paperback)

Born in Africa to English parents, Joanna grows up back in England. During WWI, she meets Teddy, a young man with tuberculosis (although she doesn't know it at the time). They settle down on a farm in Yorkshire with their two daughters. A group of Eastern European workers move into town, including a young interpreter from Hungary who Joanna befriends. Their friendship is the start of her troubles with Teddy, and eventually leads to tragedy.

This is a very powerful, strongly emotional novel (without going overboard). Despite the fact that Teddy is an invalid, it's nearly impossible for the reader to like or sympathize with him; he constantly feels sorry for himself. Joanna is high-spirited, and this is also what causes a rift between the two of them. Joanna doesn't fit in with her English neighbors, so it's only natural that she develops a friendship with Paul, another outsider. I love how Winifred Holtby is able to communicate all of this without explicitly saying it out loud. What I like about Holtby's novels is that they're free of histrionics. But the emotion is there, right under the surface. The ending of this book is supposed to be happy and uplifting, but it left me feeling a bit sad, too.