Crusoe's Daughter, by Jane Gardam

(0241115264)

OK, I nearly gave up on this. It's one of those "ahh...an Allusion; oh, look...Foreboding" books that I usually don't like much. I also broke all my rules in finishing this, but it turned out to be ok.

So, from the title you can see that Robinson Crusoe is involved. And from the blurb you know that this is about a woman who came to live in the yellow house by the sea in the North of England in 1904 (at age 6) and never moved away again. The book was published in 1985; you do the math.

Very intriguing premise. She's an odd little child, an odd teenager, and a VERY odd middle-aged woman. Because she lives, as a child, in a house with three middle-aged, single women, she has nothing much to do but read...they are her teachers as well as her benefactors. She fixates on Crusoe. There is no other word for it. She totally identifies with him in virtually every way. Consequently, if you haven't read that book--as I haven't--it will be a challenge to understand all the Allusions.

Still, once I got to about page 150, the plot picked up and it rolled along a bit better. There are Surprises in this book; very Victorian and not at all modern, or even post-modern. But a little to literary for me.