Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Author: Elizabeth Goudge

Date: 1944, 1973

Publisher: Coward McCann & Geoghegan (1944), Pyramid (1973)

ISBN: 0-515-02886-X (Pyramid)

Length: 640 pages

Quote: “That a man who had emigrated to the New World should after the lapse of years write home for a bride, and then get the wrong one because he had confused her name with that of her sister, may seem to the reader highly improbable; yet it happened. And in real life also the man held his tongue about his mistake and made a good job of his marriage.”

That’s basically the plot of Green Dolphin Street. Sisters Marianne and Marguerite lived on a small island where marriage prospects were scarce. William, an off-island bachelor, appealed to both of them. The one he warnted was Marguerite; the one to whom he mistakenly addressed his proposal was Marianne. Marguerite became a nun. And after forty years they all made peace with one another.

If you like tastefully written historical romances, you’ll like this one; it’s full of history and adventures, with some mortal danger but no risk of anything sordid happening. It’s unfortunate that Goudge had never actually been in New Zealand, but she wrote the story as best she could from the historical data she had.

If you’re a real novel reader, you may even appreciate this story stretching on for 640 pages. I’m not, and my feeling is that 320 or probably even 160 pages would have been enough.