I loved WH Hudson's "Purple Land." This flight of fancy , though, was unutterably turgid rubbish.
When 23 year old Abel is involved in a political coup, he flees retribution to the most distant parts of southern Venezuela.
Living with Indians, exploring the local forests, he encounters the girl/ wood nymph Rima....a magical, saintly, otherworldly creature of an unpleasingly fey, irrational and unknowable demeanour.
Oof...by golly it dragged on... ( )

One of those wonderfully quirky fictions that would never, ever be printed today. Worse luck. From the experience, years ago, of reading slush piles, I know that such books are around-- just not in print. Maybe the rise of ebooks will make them once again available, these eccentric and magic imaginings. ( )

Well that was disappointing. This is a sort of supernatural romance, kinda, maybe preternatural would be more apt. Anyway its about a man who finds a forest in Guyana said by locals to be haunted. I can't say much more about it without spoiling the story, especially since there is so little plot.
I was really into it at first burning quickly through the first 9 or so chapters. It seemed really compelling, but after a while i realized the reason i was reading so quickly, was because of the thin plot. I felt compelled to read a lot because that was the only way to get any sense of accomplishment story-wise as so little was actually happening.
Overall its well written but far too verbose and i was disappointed with it after a good start.
Also the romance in it became a little uncomfortable for me at times. Modern sci-fi often points out the dubious morality of Kirk's romances in the 70's Star-Trek show and those opinions came into my mind several times during this read. ( )

Perhaps Green Mansions provides more promise than it delivers, especially towards the end, where it grasps for a philosophy that it never adequately expresses or attains. It's an enchanting book, nevertheless, that leads you to think that an idyllic state with nature might offer salvation. Yet serpents are afoot in this Eden. It cannot survive unspoiled. Bleakness dominates; sorrow pervades the land. But as its hero, Abel, nears the end of his journey, his delirium leads him to a transmogrification of spirit and soul. All made possible through his encounter with the mysterious Rima, a woodland nymph whose spirit Abel literally carries with him for the rest of his life.

The writing style of Green Mansions is surprisingly fresh. It has a modern feel to it, although composed at the turn of the last century. This goes hand in hand, however, with a storyline that is pure romance and fantasy, where reality intrudes just barely at the book's beginning. Its belief in the power of the "natural being," the person unsullied by contact with civilization, to live harmoniously with nature, provided the more carnivorous qualities of human nature can be diminished, was just plausible when the novel was written, in 1904. Today, it might be more likely regarded as an impossible illusion. ( )

Mr. Abel, a socially prominent figure in Georgetown, Guyana, tells his best friend, a recent American? British? Canadian? arrival, the secret of certain events in his life before his own arrival in Georgetown from Venezuela.

I spent the whole book waiting for some big reveal to occur and for the REAL story to get started. It didn't. ( )