He gets convicted of a lesser charge, and everyone’s unhappy about everything. Nobody ever hesitates about helping a guy who stabbed an old lady in the neck get off a murder charge. I know, right?), but they all work really hard to get him off the murder charge. Then Aunt Barbe shames the gypsy father about his poverty, and he stabs Aunt Barbe’s old Nanny in the neck (yeah, she still has a Nanny. Henrietta keeps fluttering about going “They were happy before! Stop giving them candy!” but nobody listens to Henrietta because she’s a cipher of fluttery nothing. So she starts being really nice to this gypsy family that she lets move onto her land, and everyone’s like, “Hey, no, don’t invite gypsies here, they’re bad news!” Aunt Barbe gives the gypsy kids candy and plays stupid games with them, but because she’s doing this from a malicious motive, it ends up ruining their lives. She figures if she can corrupt a purely innocent soul, she’ll be clean again, instead of being a miserable bitch that everyone hates. You keep thinking they’re going to rebel against her and come raid the mansion Beauty and the Beast style, but they never do and this plot point doesn’t really come to anything.Īunt Barbe is a sour old cow, and one day over dinner she tells Henrietta how in the olden days they thought that having sex with a virgin would cure you of diseases, and Barbe has the brilliant idea that maybe you could apply this same basic principle to a diseased soul.

Aunt Barbe owns a fancy mansion and all the peasant folk hate her. I guess she isn’t yet ready to leave her life of weird, awkward servitude to her amoral aunt Barbe. It is a trifle on the nose, and I’d like to make some excuse for Rumer Godden like she was only 33 when this book was published, but you know what, Alexander had conquered the whole Mediterranean by the time he was 33, so no pass for Rumer Godden! Henrietta has a boyfriend but inexplicably refuses to marry him because she - I don’t know why, this is never explained. Yes, the lady’s name is Barbe, and she’s very sarcastic to everybody.

Gypsy Gypsy is about this girl called Henrietta who lives with her mean aunt Barbe. Clem picks up their story a decade or so after the original novel ends.Okay, I’m going to ruin the whole plot of this book for your sake to save you from reading it yourself and possibly judging Rumer Godden based on this book which you should not, she is actually wonderful. Schoolchildren can be cruel, but she makes a friend in a farmer's son.

Seven year old Kizzy is half-Romany and half-Irish: after the death of her Romany relatives, she has to negotiate tension and prejudice in a village community.

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Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone) Fandoms: The Diddakoi - Rumer Godden

The diddakoi summary