Melody Murray's Books

I was pleased nearly beyond measure when I saw this audio on my library's list. I love listening to books as I fall asleep. It's difficult to listen to new books, though, as I lose track of my place. Books I know and love are what I like best for bedtime, and this is a book I know nearly by heart. Revisiting it now, I find it prefigures so many of my other favorites- I hear echoes of Roethke, I see a glimpse of Sam Gamgee in his old age, I think of Alec Ramsey in his heady rush of freedom riding a wild stallion into his future, I see Emily Webb trying to talk to the living, and young Gerry Durrell peering into the heart of a rose to see the spider change color. I found this book so long ago I have no memory of a time I didn't know it. My childhood was full of gardens, and I yearned for a secret garden of my own. I found the loving descriptions of weeding and pruning comforting and full of continuity. I loved watching the waking of the garden and of Mary and Colin. One of the things I love most about this book is the way in which it lovingly delineates all the different ways the characters come alive. That's one of the things that makes it timeless- I could read it at 9 and identify with Mary, at 14 with Dickon, at 30 with Susan. Now, it's Ben Weatherstaff, marveling at the springing life and beauty around him, failing utterly to hold back tears and wearing a grumpy face despite his soaring heart.Perhaps of my favorite passage, one that springs to mind when I'm slack-jawed and full of wonder, often in the garden:"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one’s eyes."