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The Fox's Walk

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
A New York Times Notable Book. "[An] engaging and keenly particular story of a watchful little girl caught at a fateful historical crossroads." —The Seattle Times
During the First World War, ten-year-old Alice Moore is left in the care of her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a lovely country house in County Waterford. Living in a rigid, old-fashioned household where propriety is all, Alice is forced to piece together her world—a world on the brink of revolution—from overheard conversations, servants' gossip, and her own keen observations. She soon realizes that her family's privilege comes at a great cost to others—among them a psychic countess down on her luck, a Roman Catholic boy whom Alice hero-worships, and an admired governess, as well as most of her neighbors. After the Easter Rising, when blood is spilled close to home and loyalties are divided, tensions within Ireland and Ballydavid mount. Alice is forced to choose between her heritage of privilege and her growing moral and political conscience.
"Has the same alert phrasing, wry humor, and exquisite detail as its predecessors." —The Washington Post Book World
"A rich, impressionistic account, in an old-fashioned style, of a dying world in the last hours before sunset." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] piercingly affecting theme . . . Davis-Goff brilliantly chronicles the vanished world of the Anglo-Irish gentry." —Publishers Weekly
"An elegiac novel . . . The interest lies in the sharply observed characters and in the sensitive child's-eye view of a way of life that was soon lost." —Booklist
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 25, 2003
      A pivotal few years in Irish history—1912–1916—as seen through the eyes of a sensitive 10-year-old girl, whose immediate focus is her own sense of abandonment by her parents, is the piercingly affecting theme of Davis-Goff's new novel. As in her previous books (The Dower House; This Cold Country), Davis-Goff brilliantly chronicles the vanished world of the Anglo-Irish gentry. Left behind at her grandmother's country estate when her parents return to Dublin, Alice Moore at first chafes with desperate loneliness, bewilderment and misery at the strict rules of behavior in force at Ballydavid, the result of her aristocratic grandmother's preoccupation with the unbending social code of the Ascendancy. Gradually, she comes to love Ballydavid, while becoming aware of the events that signal the approaching end of its privileged status. Her uncle is killed during WWI, and the family's mourning seems endless. Rebellion is brewing in Ireland, the Easter Rising occurs and Sir Roger Casement, a Protestant considered a traitor to his class, will be martyred. With deft assurance, Davis-Goff conveys the complex social order of the Anglo-Irish hierarchy, in which class, religion and political thought, heretofore complacently stratified, are undergoing vital challenges. As she traces Alice's growing maturation, the narrative's elegiac tone and graceful prose do much to overcome the necessarily factual interpolations of historical events. (Sept.)Forecast:Davis-Goff's previous novels earned excellent reviews. Her audience should increase with this book, particularly because it has a good hook for talk shows—much of the background is taken from an unfinished memoir by the author's mother.

    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2003
      Davis-Goff's This Cold Country and The Dower House were considered essential reading for lovers of romance and Irish literature alike. So one can have high hopes for this tale of a little girl's sojourn on her grandmother's estate in County Waterford during World War II.

      Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      September 1, 2003
      Davis-Goff continues to stake out her fictional territory--a milieu that is Anglo-Irish in the first half of the twentieth century. Here, in an elegiac novel based partly on her mother's life, the central character is nine-year-old Alice, who is left behind at her grandmother's house, Ballydavid, when her parents and siblings return to London after their usual summer stay. Despite the fact that World War I is raging and causes a terrible family loss, and Irish nationalists threaten the status quo closer to home, Ballydavid seems sheltered from the turmoil, in part because of Grandmother's implacable resistance to change. Alice struggles with her own need for love as well as with emerging insights about both the people round her and events in the larger world. The novel proceeds at a stately pace, much like Grandmother's lumbering and rarely driven Sunbeam. The interest lies in the sharply observed characters and in the sensitive child's-eye view of a way of life that was soon lost.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      August 1, 2003
      Davis-Goff (Dower House; This Cold Country) once again leads readers along a fictional path into Ireland's stormy history, this time to the Easter Rising of 1916, describing the privileged world of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry from the perspective of ten-year-old Alice Moore. Left by her parents in the care of her forbidding and intolerant grandmother and elderly great-aunt Katie at the family estate of Ballydavid, Alice lives an insular and sheltered life of foxhunts, parties, and stilted manners. In nearby Dublin, revolution stirs the hearts of the poorer Irish, and leading national figure Sir Roger Casement is arrested and tried for treason. As Alice gradually becomes aware of the larger world, she is horrified to learn that someone as gentle and good as Casement might actually be hanged. When she sees her Irish neighbors wounded or killed in France fighting for an increasingly oppressive England, she begins to question the moral foundations of her social class. Though tension mounts as mysterious strangers and war's tragic consequences interrupt the complacency at Ballydavid, the story falls flat under the weight of the author's pedantic attention to detail, self-conscious commentary, and lifeless, paper-doll characters. Try Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry or Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September for livelier accounts of the same period. Recommended where this author is in demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/03.]-Jennifer Baker, Seattle P.L.

      Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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