Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

Sooooo this one was tough. It was odd, in a heavy and unrelenting regional dialect. Without spoilers, it's unremittingly bleak at the end with a lot of death. And the central plot is about two different men in different ways really forcing themselves on an innocent, nature-loving girl. There is content referencing intimate relations which is wildly inappropriate for children. There are quite a lot of very long, very beautiful descriptions of the British countryside which has complete magical wonder.

DO I THINK A KS2 READER WOULD ENJOY THIS? Ummm no - I don't think they would understand really any of the sentences.

DO I THINK THE CONTENT IS APPROPRIATE TO RECOMMEND TO CHILDREN? 0/10 appropriate. Would not recommend to anyone at primary school.

Overall, um, just not sure what Roald was vibing, including this on his library list of classics for Matilda who was age 4 at the time? Fictional, and a precocious reader, yes, but this book is deeply sad and mostly about sex so... I don't know -was it a widely-read classic in the 1980s when he wrote Matilda?

This one is a no from me. Am I glad I read it? I'm proud of myself for sticking with it. And some of the nature bits were gorgeous. I feel quite sad now though after finishing the story. Plus, turns out the author was really sick and died young, too. So. Gloomy, overall.

Next stop is the brick that is Nicholas Nickleby. Is Charles Dickens obsessed with orphans? Let's find out!