The Price of Youth

   Scythrop Glowry on Apr 5 08:58:22

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by Margery Williams is a remarkable but unfairly forgotten work. Perhaps it might not be unfair if it were not that a lot of English teachers seem to adore tragedies and semi-tragedies...were it not that a happy ending seems to be one of the last critiria to make the academic world love your book and therefore keep it alive. I have read the summery of (not the actual book, mind you) The Aspern Papers and I have to say that it sounds like one of the most worthless stories ever written - of course, it ends anything but happily - the academic world seems to love it. The only tradgedy I have read (besides every single one in Tolkien's Silmerilion) is Frankenstein. I'm glad they made the movie happier, if not as poignant.

My point is, that The Price of Youth seems to me one of the greatest semi-tradgedies that ever could be written. If you like that sort of thing (I don't) you should undoubtedly read it. Of course, it will hurt the tension for you having this little hint from me, but I don't want to break the hearts of my fellow happy-ending lovers. I raged around and (metaphorically) tore my hair at the end if the book...but I have to say that the tradgedy had a point here, a very interesting point, about how the good will sometimes receive the evils which the wicked were supposed to get. It's not all bad either. A few fortunate things happen at the end, actually. And it's very entertaining on the way. There's some good humor, and some very good romance, and the richest of realistic background.

It amazes me that a 19 year old girl who lived the first half of her life in England, could write about the world with an old sage eye, and about New Jersey as though she had all her roots in the soil there.

Yes, I forgot to mention, this is the first novel published by the author of The Velveteen Rabit .

The style, the plot, the realism, the richness of it all will enfold you and once you've gotten into it - which you will get - you'll want to read it to the end.