THE ENCHANTED BARN
The following review of The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingstone Hill contains a complete synopsis with spoilers. This review was first published in the 2010 edition of Thumbelina, the review paper for the {now defunct} Soiree Society of the Arts.
Since I was a young girl I have delighted best in stories with a good house-cleaning scene. There was little more exciting, to my mind, than complete domestic overhaul. The only thing that approached the huge gratification of scrubbing and organizing and making pretty was that of reading about it. The dirtier and more unkempt the house at the beginning of the story, the more fun I had watching the heroine transfigure the squalor into comfortable, cleanly beauty.
It was in a vintage collection of stories for girls that I first discovered the marvel of transforming an unused barn into a home. ‘The Barn That Blossomed’ is the tale of how a young woman, with the help of her neighbors, provided for a recently widowed family—soap suds and furniture arrangement galore.
When I first heard about The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingston Hill, I was thrilled. This, I hoped, would be the grown-up version of ‘The Barn That Blossomed,’ the old but never stale pleasure prolonged to three-hundred pages. I anticipated an engaging tale of how a poor family, by American ingenuity and sheer jollity, transformed a stone barn into a lovely home. What I found instead was an infatuated landlord with seemingly endless funds.
The Hollisters, a cultured but poverty-stricken family, are forced to move from their stifling city apartments. Sweet and capable Shirley is the eldest of the five children, and, since her mother has been bedridden, the director and provider of the family. She has been searching for an affordable home to rent, but with no success. When she is given a providential opportunity to leave her stenography work early, she rides the trolly to the country on a whim. From the trolly she spots a beautiful old stone barn, and overhears a conversation that reveals it to have been unused for years. The inspiration comes to her softly at first. What a lovely house that barn would make! She tries to reason herself out of the idea. What would Mother say to living in a barn? She visits the barn and finds it irresistible. She returns to the city with great plans and visions already blossoming inside her.
Shirley feels reckless but inspired when she searches out the city office of the mysterious Mr. Graham. Alas, Mr. Graham has already gone out, but his son is available and eager to please.
Mr. Sidney Graham is a dashingly handsome, fabulously wealthy, and gallantly civil gentleman. He nearly instantly develops a ‘case’ on Shirley {as Shirley’s siblings phrase it}, and so he agrees to rent the old stone barn to the pretty and shyly modest girl. Before he allows her family to take residence, however, he insists on making necessary renovations to the barn. The besotted landlord construes these necessary additions to be wall partitions, a staircase, larger windows, and a stone chimney {for keeping the hay dry, is his embarrassed and improbable explanation to a properly piqued Shirley}. The romance of the barn is quickly dulled by modern luxuries the Hollisters never enjoyed even when living in an actual house: electric lights and a telephone, for instance. It is not that I minded the renovation {alright, I did}, but I was hoping to see that take place by the steady, cheerful efforts of the family members, not by a contemporary genie.
Even once the Hollisters have moved into the barn, Mr. Graham keeps visiting, usually laden with presents. Shirley is attracted to him, but is ashamed that she could think so much of a man beyond her social status. She does her best to dismiss him from her thoughts.
In defense of the book I can say this—the Christian elements of the story are more well-written than what I have encountered in other ‘Christian fiction.’ It was slightly awkward at times, but it generally escaped the sense of being tacked-on at the last minute. Mrs. Hill managed to interweave Christian thought and principle several times in the story, and so Shirley and Graham’s spiritual conversations had a more authentic feel than would have otherwise been possible.
The last chapters revert to melodrama. Shirley is called on an unexpected trip to Washington by her boss. The company is handling a secretive government contract, and there are enemies anxious to get hold of the papers. Shirley, possessing the sought papers, is predictably kidnapped by a pair of mysterious men and taken to a remote and decrepit house. Predictably, she is able to conceal the papers and deceive her captors. Most predictably of all, Sidney Graham learns of her plight, discovers her whereabouts, and soon has her safe in his strong arms. The papers are safe, and Shirley is declared an heroine.
The book ends with the expected proposal, and with happy plans for the future that include further updates to the stone ‘barn.’ The Enchanted Barn has left at least one reader disenchanted.
• cover art from the Bantam Paperback edition of The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingstone Hill •
December 6, 2013