Every other day she wakes up to find that it is 1918 and everyone thinks she is Clare Mobley – even Clare’s sister Emily. Charlotte Makepeace is sent to an English boarding school in 1958. Charlotte Sometimes is her most famous novel and even has a song based on it by The Cure. I never heard of Penelope Farmer prior to reading Charlotte Sometimes, but now I want to track down all her books and read them. When I was a kid I used to love this author’s book The Summer Birds I’m so glad I read this one for the Goodreads’ group: A Thrilling Term at Goodreads: The Girls’ School-Story Group. This is a skillfully told story, compelling from beginning to end, and very touching throughout. Wonderful story of one’s identity and exactly what that means, of boarding school, of details about WWI and the late 1950s too. As a kid I would have loved putting myself in Charlotte’s place and in Emily’s place, and it was interesting even now. The mostly absent Clare was fascinating too. It was fun to try to figure out who one particular character was.Ĭharlotte is a wonderful character, and I was particularly fond of Emily. It’s a fun meld of speculative fiction and historical fiction. If I wasn’t so in touch with my 10 year old self, I might have given this only 4 stars, but it’s a completely delightful and smart story. My 10 year old self gives this 5 full stars. Great fun! I’d have adored this when I was 9, 10, 11. It's still one of my favorite books, and it still puts me in the mood to listen to the Cure. Once I read the book, and fell in love with it, I had to get my own copy so I could share it with all of my Cure loving friends.

The title Charlotte Sometimes caught my eye and grabbed the book to read in my tent later.

Me, being bored to tears by the rain and driven crazy by the kids running amok decided to check out the bookshelves. It was a rainy day so the councilors were letting the kids run amok in the building. They had a large building with a stage that had the back wall covered in bookshelves. I had just graduated from high school, and was working at a Girl Scout summer camp in Vermont. I didn't have a clue that the song title was taken from a book, and that lines from the book were used in the song, as well as in the song The Empty World (She talked about the armies, that marched inside her head). One of my favorite songs by the Cure was always Charlotte Sometimes. What can I say, I've always liked boys in makeup. That's 80's quasi-gothy band, lead by Robert Smith. I have to admit to being a HUGE fan of the Cure. I will fully admit that I didn't discover this book in the traditional way.

Charlotte sometimes book