I think this must be one of the most beautiful 'children's book you should read as an adult' I've ever read (or in fact listened to, exquisitely spoken by Hannah Gordon). I can't believe I've only just discovered it; wistful, poignant, deep and written like a piece of art. Utterly captivating.

Charlotte Makepeace starts at boarding school, I am guessing sometime in the 1950s. To add to her troubles of fitting in at a new school, she finds that she is changing places on alternate days with a girl who was alive during the first world war. Charlotte is confused and starts to wonder who she really is.

This is a beautifully written book, very thoughtful and philosophical. I am very sorry not to have read it as a child, but hugely enjoyed reading it aloud to my daughter and discussing the story's ideas. Although we have read many books about children in World War II, this was the first we had read about the first war and felt this was sensitively written, describing the family devastated by the loss of their son, and how he had always dreampt of the glory of war and found the reality much different.

The story takes some interesting twists and turns, and gives you lots to think about.

I've been itching to read this book for ages. I'm so glad I finally got to it, because it was quite good!

The time-travel theme has been done many times, of course, but I quite liked how it was done here. As far as I can tell, Charlotte and Clare physically travelled through time (as opposed to just their consciousnesses travelling); they must have looked very much alike for so few people to have noticed the difference. But the story is not so much about the time travel itself as it is about identity. It's also an English boarding school story, which is bound to introduce a number of interesting characters and scenarios. There were a few things that I thought might be relevant that were never addressed again (what was the deal with Elsie, for example?), but on the whole it was a pretty cohesive story.

I did like most of the characters, but I especially liked Clare's younger sister, Emily. She had such a big personality for a little girl; she was only ten, but in some ways she came across as more of an adventurous, rebellious teenager. The stuffy Chisel Browns were also pretty entertaining.

The narrative is quite lovely -- even poetic -- in places, and I enjoyed reading every word. However, the EPUB edition that I had (supposedly based on the 40th anniversary edition of the novel) was abysmal. There were numerous typos and odd, random punctuation (like errant periods or one half of a set of quotation marks just dangling in the middle of nowhere) and I find it difficult to believe that such mistakes were actually included in the original... and then continually overlooked for the next 40 years! (The good thing about this edition, though, was that it included the original ending. Apparently, someone in the 1980s decided that the last bit shouldn't be included.)

All in all, I really enjoyed this one and I can see why it's considered a classic. Funnily enough, it's the third book about the Makepeace sisters. However, you do not need to have read the first two books to enjoy the third (and it's a good thing, too, since the others appear to be out of print).

http://theladybugreads.blogspot.ca/20...

After Charlotte's first night at her new boarding school, she wakes up in the same room, but with different roommates. Moreover, these different roommates don't call her "Charlotte," but "Clare." Charlotte is totally confused and can't figure out what has happened. After a while, she realizes she's travelled back in time to World War I, and that the real Clare has travelled forward to Charlotte's time. Once they realize this, Charlotte and Clare devise a way to correspond with each other across the decades.

Awesome time fantasy! I still haven't gotten tired of this book (20 years later).

Although this is under 200 pages, there is a lot of detail and subtlety as well as potentially confusing worlds/times/characters. I feel like I want to read it again now that I know the overall big picture.

Having read the first book in this trilogy: The Summer Birds (but not Emma in Winter, the second), I was puzzled by the entire absence of any reference to the events that had occurred previously - and certainly, anyone who knows that book will concur that those were not forgettable everyday kinds of things. So why not just give the characters of Charlotte and Emma different names if the books aren't connected? Or are they? (And does the second book somehow explain things about this?)

After this first reading, I don't think Charlotte Sometimes is quite as good a book as Tom's Midnight Garden, to which it is frequently compared, or another one that it reminded me of: When Marnie Was There. But it is still excellent, and it has its own particular charms.

BTW, I was very surprised to learn that some editions omit the parcel at the end (I haven't actually seen one of these - if you can specifically identify an edition without the parcel, please let me know, but this excellent blog post has some details of the versions). Like other reviewers, I'd love to know more about the story behind Farmer's decision to revise the book. The parcel is really essential to the book, in my opinion.

This actually needs a bit more investigation, because I've now seen a Red Fox edition from 1999 and it includes the parcel (though it omits the P.S. to the enclosed letter), but it also includes, just before it, the discovery of a letter hidden in the bedpost (perhaps *this* is what readers are remembering as being removed, but in fact it is *added* to the revised 1985 edition). I have also noticed some minor variations in the text ("knickers" in the Red Fox instead of "bloomers" in the 2007 NYRB for the first page; and the Red Fox ends with the words "for ever" instead of the NYRB's "permanently" - there are many more little alterations, some of greater significance than others). I have not yet seen a version that includes the bus ride home to Aviary Hall as its final piece, but I would like to. If I had more spare time, I'd do a serious line-by-line comparison of these. I'm surprised that no one has yet done this.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the second book of the series has never been reprinted in hardcover. However, it is at least available digitally, so I'll have to deal with that.

This was a really good book. It's considered a children's book, and apparently also a classic, yet somehow I missed out on reading it when I was a child, even though it would have been available then. This is a time travel fantasy. Two young girls, (I think they're both thirteen), from different time periods sleep in the same bed at a boarding school and wake up in each other's lives. Charlotte lives in the 1960s. Clare lives in 1918. For awhile, they alternate days. Charlotte goes to bed one night and wakes up as herself, then she goes to bed another night and wakes up in Clare's life. But then, one day, when Charlotte is still in the past, she and Clare's younger sister Emily are moved out of the school into lodgings in town. They continue to go to the school as day students. So Charlotte is stuck in the past, and Clare is stuck in the future. The novel is told completely from Charlotte's point of view. We only hear about Clare from other people, or from messages she leaves Charlotte in a diary while they are still alternating days. There is suspense, as Charlotte tries to figure out how to sleep again in the "magic" bed even though she is no longer living at the school. Charlotte also fears that because she has been in the past so long---months, as it turns out---that maybe the bed no longer "works". But the book isn't just about Charlotte longing to get back to her own time. It's about her life in the past. She becomes very fond of Emily, Clare's little sister, although she also misses her own little sister. One of the really sad aspects of this story is the effect of the first World War on the people Charlotte meets in the past. She and Emily go to stay at lodgings with an elderly couple and their older daughter. Their son was killed in the war, and the way they grieve for him, as his sister does, shows the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary people. This is all the more jarring and impactful because it isn't a book specifically about the war. Then there is a teacher who is engaged to a soldier as a young woman, in 1918. He is killed in the war. When Charlotte sees her again in the future, the teacher is now elderly, and is still wearing the engagement ring.
One of the things Charlotte struggles with is her identity. It concerns her that no one seems to notice that she's not really Clare, except for Emily, and it takes her a little while to notice.
I felt very emotional reading this book. It is definitely well-written. You get caught up in the emotional life as well as the outer life of Charlotte.

This is one of those special books that you read as a child and it stays with you into adulthood. It was just as mesmerising this time around.

Charlotte trades places with a girl named Clare since both girls sleep in the same bed at boarding school. But when Charlotte gets stuck in Clare's time because she can't sleep in the bed she must figure out how to get back. Plot tends to be a little dull at times, the movement between times does not offer much action. Characters are not very well developed.

2024: Decided to visit this classic when I wasn't able to concentrate on new stuff. As always, it's fun to take nostalgic look at a book that you read a gazillion times as a kid. I don't know what it is about this book, but it holds a special place in my bookish heart. It's time travel, sure, but it's also a strangely contemplative look at wartime, friendship/sisterhood, coming of age....

2015 Reading Challenge: A book from my childhood!

This was probably my earliest experience with time travel books, and was later my go-to book when I needed a paperback to take somewhere. Finally dug this out of my parents' attic to add to my own library now. Definitely recommended.

That was so good! Thank you, Robert Smith, for leading me to such an enjoyable book—kind of like if Frances Hodgson Burnett had written a supernatural gothic novel. I can’t wait to discuss it with the upcoming Cure Book Club!

3,5⭐

Something a friend wrote reminded me of this book. I've read it at least a dozen times since I first found it when I was about nine, and it haunts me to this day.