Lewis said that upon reading this astonishing 19th-century fairy tale he "had crossed a great frontier," and numerous others both before and since have felt similarly.In MacDonald's fairy tales, both those for children and (like this one) those for adults, the "fairy land" clearly represents the spiritual world, or our own world revealed in all of its depth and meaning. At times almost forthrightly allegorical, at other times richly dreamlike (and indeed having a close connection to the symbolic world of dreams), this story of a young man who finds himself on a long journey through a land of fantasy is more truly the story of the spiritual quest that is at the core of his life's work, a quest that must end with the ultimate surrender of the self.The glory of MacDonald's work is that this surrender is both hard won (or lost!) and yet rippling with joy when at last experienced. As the narrator says of a heavenly woman in this tale, "She knew something too good to be told." One senses the same of the author himself.Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    Between these two worlds Serezha must divide his time - an his loyalties. With the unblinking clarity of a child often too honest for his own and other's comfort, he describes everybody as they impress his awakening consciousness, from the kindly uncles who tease him unmercifully to the millionaire who cares more for his English pigs than for his serfs. The book is inspired by a lyrical delight in nature and country pursuits, but it is not an idyll. Bitter homesickness, physical terrors, the horror provoked by arbitrary death - such experiences are recorded graphically, with a painful candour resembling at times Tolstoy's.This volume forms the second part of Aksakov's autobiographical trilogy, but it may br read independently, as a classic of its kind in a literature which excels in the genre of childhood reminiscence.

    Doctor Thorne carries the Barchester Chronicles sequence of novels away from the Church, where the earlier volumes had been set, and towards social commentary and even comedy of manners.