Elizabeth, Elizabeth

I first read this book when I was 12 years old. I am now 20 and it still retains all of its mystery and charm. The plot centres around a young girl, Elisabeth, who spends the Summer with her aunt in Scotland. Her aunt Kate is an Oxford historian and she is researching a book on the 18th. cantury owner of the Robinsheugh estate. Elisabeth meanwhile becomes lonely. She discovers an old glass mirror and is transported to the 18th. century Robinsheugh. There she is recognised as Elisabeth Melville, the daughter of the Baird that Kate is researching. Elisabeth finds a sense of belonging and the only child of the 20th. cantury delights in having three brothers and a sister. It is her elder brother Robin that she adores and continues to return just to see him but she cannot shake a nagging doubt that he is not all he seems.The book is excellent in that it conveys how lonely a child can feel and how something that starts as a passtime to relieve that loneliness becomes an obsession. The author effectively captures Elisabeth's dilema; should she remain as Elisabeth Melville or return to her old life as Elisabeth Martin? The issue of mental breakdown is also very well illustrated. Kate feels the ghosts of the past as she becomes embroiled in her work but she is unable to break free from her work; which becomes her obsession. The relationship between Kate and Elisabeth develops from a sense of alienation to one of understanding. My favourite aspect of the book centred around Elisabeth and Robin. Robin is everything an older brother should be and Elisabeth adores him completely. However there is another side to Robin that she discovers when he starts neglecting to teach her Latin. That is just the beginning. The author shows how one can love someone so much that they become blind to their faults, refusing to believe the bleaker truth in order to preserve the ideal. We also discover that a person can have two different personalities that are so completely opposite to each other that it is hard to determine which is really the true personality.The final chapters of the book are the most heartbreaking. The dilema is resoloved but at the same time, no full explanation can be given for what happened. It appears to be based more on personal opinion.An amazing book, the inside cover calls it "haunting". That is indeed true; when I read it, it remains in my mind for days afterwards. I wish that someday I could visit a place as beautiful as the Robinsheugh estate. To fininsh I will quote one of my favorite lines from the book, said by Elisabeth Melville: "Learning is the gold at the foot of my rainbow."It is nice to believe that we all have our own personal rainbows.