Customer Reviews

Pilgrims Inn

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I highly recommend this lovely book. The basic plot centers around the Elliot family who purchase a Medieval inn in the English countryside. Themes include continuity (of family)and healing from past mistakes and poor decisions. Goudge is a very descriptive writer. She takes you to the houses Dameroshay and the Herb of Grace, and into the enchanted forest where the fairy person lives, caring for the needy animals. Characters are true to life set in the post WWII period. I also recommend this for using in High School English lit courses (which I teach) for examples of not only descriptive writing, but also for allusion, character development, and good use of plot. Even though it is out of print, this is a lovely book that deserves numerous readings and will provide hours of enjoyment.

This book by Elizabeth Goudge is part II in the Eliot Family trilogy, and is also released under the title "The Herb of Grace" a reference to the name of the old inn the family buys in the country after World War II. The first book in the series is: "The Bird in the Tree" and last is: "The Heart of the Family".

Goudge was a really unique and authentic voice. She was deeply spiritual, which may automatically cause many people to turn away from her books. She does not preach, however, and her characters do not preach "at you." They live lives that may include growth, suffering, and perhaps eventually opening their eyes to the beauty around them that for some reason they were unable to see before; there is much about the beauty of the forest, nature, the wild animals, and very little or none about religion per se. In fact, in this book the eldest Eliot son, Hilary, an Anglican Clergyman, says to someone about his past Sunday sermon, "I think they all got a good sleep, I'm glad I could do that for them..." its a bittersweet dry British humor, he's aware of his limitations, and knows very well those who come to his services are more inclined to doze than be enlightened.

The force of the family, the heart of it all, is Lucilla, Lady Eliot, widow, mother of many children, of whom three sons were killed in World War I, and her eldest, Hilary, was badly wounded. World War II has quite literally just ended, her grandson David, whom she raised, as his father, her favorite child, was one of those sons killed in the first war, was a bomber pilot during this last war, and is now suffering from a type of nervious breakdown...we'd call it post traumatic stress syndrome. Another son, with a egotistical wife and too many children, is mentally and physically exhausted from his work in the war as well. Lucilla is determined that she will get all these remaining family members out to the country, away from London, to heal, no matter how she has to do it. She's not beyond manipulation, "for their own good".

Its an interesting insight to see England right after WWII, when everyone still had ration coupons, and food, gasoline, everything, was rationed and people made do by trading or growing gardens or, as one character says about picking someone up at the train station, the person will have to go down there with the bakery truck, and come back up with the meat truck, there's no other way to and from that week...

Its a lovely, old fashioned little story...not boring, but no overt sex or violence, just the lives of a family trying to stick together and survive and get through things. The writing of Goudge makes it memorable. Its not, in my opinion, sentimental, though some would say it is. There is a depth to it, and to all her works that I have read, that stay with you, and you do remember these people, unlike how many other characters in books? Her stories are like little jewels, and the further we get from that long ago time, the more precious they are.

Pilgrim's Inn reminds me of nothing as much as Alcott's Little Women. Part of a 3 title family saga, it tells of the efforts of 3 generations of Eliots to adjust to post WWII English life. The central theme is love and the virtues of giving of oneself. The story, which centers upon a move to a medieval building that was originally an inn for religious pilgrims, is frequently interrupted with little philosophical homilies applicable to the specific character in question. It's a pleasant read and a highly descriptive, interesting tale, but I found myself skimming the sermonettes with ever increasing rapidity.