Narration Interrupted

In third-person narration, sometimes you get a narrator with a distinct personality, even if the narrator is not really a character in the book.

As is the case with The Wonderful Garden by E. Nesbit. The narrator (or perhaps the author herself?) pops her head in every now and again to give her two cents.

In the two selections below, the narrator's intrusion primarily helps us with characterization... particularly of two minor characters.

In the first selection, Caroline (one of the children) is trying work through a dilemma. She approaches the vicar of the church: a Mr. Penfold. You'll see the narrator pop in near the end of this verbal exchange, just to let us know that Mr. Penfold is going to be one of the good guys in the story.

"You're a clergyman, and so I suppose you know all about right and wrong?"

"I do my best to know," he said. "Well?"

"Well, aren't there some secrets you ought to keep, even if you know that some people would say you oughtn't to if they were to know you were keeping them--only of course they don't?"

I think it was rather clever of Mr. Penfold to understand this; but he did.

From good guys to bad guys now. The next selection is where the children are trying to speak with Lord Andore, but they are rebuffed at the door...

And then the cap disappeared only to reappear a moment later at the lodge door, on the head of a very angry old lady with a very sharp long nose, who might have been Mrs. Wilmington's grandmother.

"Out you go, the way you came," she said; "that's the order. What do you want, anyhow?"

"We've got a bouquet for Lord Andore," said Caroline, showing it.

"Keep it till the fifteenth," said the woman; a silly thing to say, for no bouquet will keep a fortnight. "No village people admitted till the gala and fete when his lordship comes of age. You can come then. Out you go. I've no patience," she added; and it was quite plain that she had not.

Taken from:
E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden (1911), pp. 153, 259-60.

What did I think of this book? Not bad. Certainly not my favourite book by Nesbit, but it was amusing in its own way.