Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great fantasy story., July 22, 1998
By A Customer
"Harding's Luck" is one of E. Nesbit's classic fantasies, though darker and more Dickensian than most. It is something of a sequel to her "House of Arden," but has a different hero and can stand alone quite well. It's an English time-travel story, and its hero Dickie is a great hero. One of my two favorite by Nesbit (and I've read them all.)
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an elderly englishman's view, August 17, 2004
I'm buying 'Harding's Luck' for one of my 6 grandaughters - a very bright girl in Australia coming up for eleven years old, about the age I read it myself, with huge enjoyment. Her mother tells me that her daughter spurns the modern children's novels she gives her on the grounds that they're "too real" - unlike the books sent by grandfather - as e.g 'Wind on the Moon" by Eric Linklater most recently (highly recommended for 10 year-olds, if you can find it!).
'Harding's Luck' does wear its heart on its sleeve but no more than any of the great 19th century novelists of France, Russia or Britain - or indeed the USA, - and what's wrong with a novel with a message anyway? In fact it's no more 'naive', as one of your reviewers characterises it, than "The Railway Children" made twice into films. It's a lot less preachy and sentimental than say, Little Lord Fauntleroy, whose rags-to-earldom plot line, with adult redemption thrown in, is not so far removed. But in the hands of Nesbit who unlike F. Hodgson Burnett is a 'real' writer, traditional material is transmuted through imagination into something rich and strange and original.
Stylistically too, it is right up to Nesbit's best form - try reading it aloud.
Finally Harding's Luck has all the elements that will capture a child's sympathy and imagination : injustice, poverty, deformity, magic, romance, suspense, sacrifice, and triumph over adversity. And with twist - the happy ending is not quite happy.
Piers Croke
London
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dickens would be proud, November 17, 1998
Many of Edith Nesbit's books are not so much novels as they are sequences of shorter stories (perhaps they were published, or meant to be read, serially?) Harding's Luck and its companion, The House of Arden, have far more complex and interwoven plots. The events in the lighter House of Arden form only a part Harding's Luck, as Dickie is a much fuller character than Edred and Elfrida. They must have been plotted together, as each contains references to the other.As in The Psammead and the Carpet, there are numerous instances of Nesbit's socialist views (not in the modern sense of big government, more along the lines of GK Chesterton's definition "A socialist is a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney sweeps paid for it."). Children will never notice these; adults may find them sweet but sadly naive. In their richness of plot and character, and in the sense of something deeper and truer lurking behind the superficial magic, these two are probably the crown of Nesbit's work. Givn the fact that the paperback copy of Harding's Luck costs $10, it's worthwhile to shell out another $7 for the hardback, so you'll have it longer.
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