Falconer's Lure readthrough: Chapters 1-3

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks to all contributors for a very informative and engaging discussion of The Marlows and the Traitor. We're on to #3 in the series, Falconer's Lure.



It always faintly surprises me that Nicola is a sun-worshipper, though it's steadily attested in quite a few of the novels. She seems an Arctic Circle type to me somehow...

We find that Trennels was commandeered during the war as a Commandos training school HQ. (I always think Anquetil and Foley must have trained there: this has been an early incidence of your regularly scheduled fic prompt.) But we don't see a lot of evidence of the re-purposing and perhaps damage that it must have undergone, even if it only became offices: people rarely treat their workplaces with the same care as they do their homes, and I somehow envisage quite a lot of institutional grey paint involved in a Commandos HQ. One more pressure on the Marlow family finances, though, setting all the scuffs and scrapes to rights?

Forest does her infodumping nicely in this chapter, I think. The reader is presumed to be as ignorant as Nicola about hawking, to begin with, but we're given a lot of jargon and detail in the course of Jael's rescue from the tree, without a sense of it being laid on with a trowel. I wonder what people thought of this first encounter with Patrick? I first ran across him in End of Term, where he's a rather more suave person than the querulous and lofty one we see here (though still, you might argue, querulous and lofty), and have had a lingering fondness for the little twirp ever since.

I enjoy Patrick's 'mews voice', used to rather devastating effect later in the novel, of course; and his splendidly callous reaction to Nicola having her thumb laid open by a maddened goshawk. Nick's a very good sport about that, isn't she? I'd have clocked him. The early hints of Patrick's introversion, in him shying away from meeting the extended Marlow family, are subtle enough to go almost unnoticed, I think. More obviously, there are indications of Patrick's freedoms and privileges, as an only child, that the Marlows don't enjoy. (Though Patrick's consistently maintained selfishness with limited supplies of hot water is probably a Patrick Thing rather than an only child thing: Misuse of the Immersion was a crime capital in my childhood household, worse even than Misuse of the Telephone--hang on *grin*). As an only child, I often felt that children's fiction stigmatised only children, treating them as spoilt brats who were, if essentially Good Sorts, tamed by contact with a large rambunctious family, or if not Good Sorts, destined for villainy and comeuppance. While Forest consistently delineates the differences in perception between only children and siblings, they are presented as differences, advantages and disadvantages, rather than moralised values. I loved her for that as a child.

The contrasts between town life and country life--characters' unexpected or nuanced preferences for one or the other, are unobtrusively established here. I also very much like the set-up of uneasy familiarity epitomised in Karen and Rowan's 'But I remember this...': instead of the Marlows being entire newcomers, they're placed in the perhaps even more awkward position of having some local ties and claims, but still being essentially urban blow-ins. I'm also unreasonably charmed by little Peter and Patrick playing explorers, and furious tiny Nicola wanting to join in, and stomping off when they wouldn't let her.





I find the deferential-comic servants in Falconer's Lure a bit hard to take: later in the series they do take on a bit of personality, but here I feel Mrs Bertie is very much a patronising stereotype, and I always want to move swiftly along. Or read fic from her point of view. (This has been your regularly scheduled, &c.)

But the breakfast setpiece is a delight. Coming to Falconer's Lure late, after I'd read all but three of the other books, I was surprised quite how towny the Marlows are at this stage: they've a lot to learn, as Geoff later remarks. Lawrie being endeared by piglets and not knowing what game is; Peter's fascination with agricultural machinery; perhaps most pitiless of all, Rowan's mild indifference, remarking on the bull as a 'respectable animal' and still not really knowing what one does with hawks.

I like Ginty 'thinking thoughts': at first perhaps (especially if you come to it as most people probably do, in ignorance of Traitor) she's just conspicuously being fifteen, but the mentions of her introspection are dropped regularly but subtly enough to cause a build of tension before her explosion. Jon's account of Patrick's fall from the cliffs and prolonged absence from school resonates very neatly with that.

I enjoy the glimpses of Geoff and Jon's boyhood, too (this has been your regularly, &c.); the sense that they might not really have got on (and mightn't still, for all the bluff joshing here?) And though it might be a touch obvious, I do like the fact of Jon, falconer, ending up in the RAF, and Geoff, angler, in the Navy.

The perfectly batty things that people say in inconsequential conversation with those with whom they have few inhibitions: Lawrie's 'I shall be a hawk in future' (a long memory and excessive pride: what could be less Lawrie?); and Karen's deep, hedgehog-knows-one-thing voice.

Well, we said we'd discuss the aftermath of Traitor, and here it is. The Marlows seem to have handled this one magnificently, I must say. The secrecy about the events themselves is enjoined upon them by His Majesty's Government, and there's little they can do about that, though one does feel the profound imbalance of Peter, Nicola and Ginty having to remain silent about more traumatic experience, while Lawrie gets to be honest about her accident. (The punishment of 'Jabberwocky', by the way, is priceless.) As Jon, in his ignorance, rather contrives to point out, Nicola and Peter have better 'morale', presumably because they were the more active participants in foiling Foley: they did more potentially traumatic things--Nicola in Talisman, Peter actually killing someone--but also have a sense of having acquitted themselves well, which is presumably helping their recovery. (I wonder if Peter's giggle when Jon mentions enemy agents is actually pure hysteria, rather than any sense of comic irony, though.) Ginty, meanwhile, feels guilty and weak, one presumes, at not being more active and decisive. Keeping her back from school rather magnifies her own sense of her delicacy and incompetence, and she begins to build an identity around sensitivity, which is then bolstered by the malign influence of Unity Logan. The incorrigibles in Forest seem not, one notices, to be subject to the same hygiene standards one assumes Matron usually enjoins: both Dobson, M. and Logan, U have grubby necks, I think: and lank hair seems to be another Forestian indication of poor character. Nicola's ' "She writes poetry too" ', I rather like; and that it's correctively challenged by Karen, suggesting that Unity may have some talents invisible to Nicola and Rowan's more brusque sensibilities. (The 'Threnody for Icarus' joke has always struck me as almost too sophisticated for the books' original target market, by the way: I don't think I would have seen why that's so very ghastly until I was rather older than Unity herself.)

Nicola and Peter's disagreement over Patrick's friendship prefigures a lot that Forest will later develop. What is it about the Merrick Boy, honestly?

I like to note last words, and Jon's are splendidly, impeccably mundane.

The juxtaposition of Nicola and Patrick's conversation as Sprog stoops to the lure with Jon's crash is actually very movingly handled, I think (one is hyper-aware of sounding like Unity Logan here): Patrick's dismissals of Nicola's observant forebodings tell us a good deal about both of them, as well as tying into a theme of slightly irrational guilt at losses and injuries that are not really those characters' faults at all. For all that this novel is lazy and sunlit in some ways; episodic rather than plotty or pacey, it's still rather haunted.





Never was chapter more aptly named. I can imagine that Geoff and Pam are rather poleaxed by first Jon's death and then the new responsibilities that it brings them: but you might have thought that they'd manage to tell their children about such an enormous change to their lives.

Forest is deeply unsympathetic to affectation: I think sometimes excessively so. Certainly I enjoy the comedy of Ginty's overwrought but banal letters and Unity's 'Threnody for Icarus' (I think alternately it should probably be left to the imagination and someone really should have a go at writing it: this has been your much less regularly scheduled poetry prompt) but I also consider that maybe persons of 15 or so need to be allowed some affectation so that they can winnow out their true feelings from those that are merely conventional. It's always difficult to know how to respond to the death of a family member to whom you weren't close, even if you're not 15 and traumatised by a recent kidnapping incident during which you on several occasions came close to death. I suppose the point here is that Ginty already knows she feels no true grief for Jon, and so her attempts at sensibility are merely fake. But she, of all the younger members of the family, might feel an odd sort of guilt at his death: her last exchange with him was fraught, where the rest of the siblings at least can remember him cheerful.

The Trennels entail? How likely? I think there has been discussion before, and the consensus was not awfully, but informed opinion would be much welcomed.

Geoff, you feel, really is quite grief-stricken by Jon's death; perhaps because their relationship was never quite as cordial as it might have been; certainly because of his envy of Trennels and the careful-what-you-wish-for effect, here further complicated by the fact that what 18-year-old Geoff ardently desired means (he supposes) 40-something Geoff hashing his Navy career when he's just been promoted Captain. His 'odd look' as Ginty expresses her delight at living in the countryside, grief for Jon suspended, brings into brief contact the two Marlows who might have the most complex and irreconcilable reactions to their cousin's death. I get the feeling that we're supposed to judge harshly Ginty's mid-skip recollection of the circumstances that have brought them the stroke of good fortune, in comparison with Nicola's sudden access of disinterested grief, but I'm slightly disinclined to do so: confusion and instability at not feeling grief in approved ways, and the discomfort of trying to perform a sombre mein, is just as valid an emotion as being surprised by grief one didn't know one felt.

Nicola and Patrick's conversations are always a delight, I think: as a child I wished I had a companion who would discuss historical and literary fanlife as they do, to which we shall recur in the discussion of End of Term. But for now: Patrick's Ricardianism is a superb touch; yes, and there is our catchphrase: 'Tudor propaganda'. The little foreshadowing of Regina's loss: despite its episodic qualities, this really is a very studied novel, full of delicate echoes. And finally, Lawrie's quite, quite bonkers, but somehow very touching, concern for the the Inner Lives of Inanimate Objects.


It's goodbye from me for a bit, as highfantastical will be taking over next week, and sprog_63 the week after that.

So, looking forward to your comments. Have at it!

Comments

Only children

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

"While Forest consistently delineates the differences in perception between only children and siblings, they are presented as differences, advantages and disadvantages, rather than moralised values. I loved her for that as a child."

I was one of three (plus 2-3 extras - cousins for whom my parents were guardian and another child who lived with us on and off for a couple of years), but also appreciated this difference from most other writers. I adored the sibling relationships she writes, too, and especially the dialogue she wrote: I wonder if the large family she played with as a child were as sophisticated in their banter? There are few writers who can hit this note as well as Forest (or even get near).

"No one ever tells us anything" is a constant cry in large families, over small things and important ones. I find it fairly unsurprising that even something as huge as this gets told to some children and not others - it is not deliberate generally. Geoff appears genuinely surprised that Nicola and later Ginty didn't know. Aware of this tendency in herself, my mother frequently begins pieces of news with "Did I tell you, or was it J ?" and often this is something she's told me, but I only learn from him other things which she has told him twice!

I think this relates to my previously offered view about how children in larger families delight in special attention as the individual can get lost in the sum of the whole family. (That was referring to Nicola-and-Giles and there are hints in FL here and later, which don't really carry through the series, of a less intense Lawrie-and-Karen bond ... perhaps the two eldest each took a baby twin to look after, when Pam Marlow had 6 under sixes to manage!!). I wonder if this is part of Patrick's appeal: he is very single minded about whatever/whoever is the focus of his attention and perhaps Peter/Nicola etc. in turn relish this? But his appeal (or otherwise, I suppose) merits a thread of its own.

Re: Only children

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

I do wish there were more information about Forest's childhood -- I'd love to know all about the large family, and to what extent any of their dynamics might have influenced her depiction of the Marlows. It would be as interesting, to me, if they were completely different!

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Nicola's ' "She writes poetry too" ', I rather like; and that it's correctively challenged by Karen, suggesting that Unity may have some talents invisible to Nicola and Rowan's more brusque sensibilities.

I've always loved this. The easy win would be to leave it at Nicola's remark, with its plausibly childish heartiness and suspicion of grubby, sentimental, aesthetic Unity. I'd hazard a guess that nearly all school-story type authors would let that pass unchallenged in context, EVEN IF elsewhere in the same book, or at least the same series, their heroine[s] are themselves inclined to follow artistic and/or writerly paths. It's so Forest to jump into the complication immediately. It does make me wish that we had a moment like this for Marie: unless we do and it's just slipped my mind for the time being?

I think alternately it should probably be left to the imagination and someone really should have a go at writing it: this has been your much less regularly scheduled poetry prompt

Ahaha. As [at least one of!] trennels' resident poet[s], I feel personally implicated by this challenge, as not by the fic prompts. Getting inside the head of one U. Logan may be beyond me, though.

[Less cheerfully: I hadn't taken note of Jon's last words. Really glad you mentioned that.]

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Other minuscule details I like in the breakfast chapter: Lawrie repenting of her toast-grabbing ways; Karen having a smaller appetite for breakfast than the rest of the family (ascetic scholarly ways?!); Nicola's relative lack of conscientiousness over the bedmaking at this point, in comparison to various school tasks, sharing of other home jobs later on, etc.

(I hate the way Mrs Bertie is written here, though. So much better later on.)

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I think there are moments of complication for Marie: she stands up for Pomona against the popular set in her class quite honourably, even if her manner seems whingey. She's never really allowed to be much good at anything, though: her academic career suggests a rough par with, say, Lawrie--some time in a B form, then promoted, and though she's a weak member of the netball team, mainly there for character-formation reasons, she can't be absolutely appalling. Not appalling like I was appalling at netball.

I wonder if her whole trajectory isn't a sort of vindication in some ways: that a chronic, undiagnosed illness (I know that's not exactly the way it's put, but there are presumably several layers lost in the telling before Nicola hears it) has actually had a deleterious effect on her personality.

I'd like to think that Unity (or her family, at least) has a subscription to Horizon or something, and her references to Beauty and so forth are not sub-Romanticism so much as an attempt at Audenesque brittleness or New Apocalypse. That may be stretching it a bit. But, you know, a chance encounter with 'Musée des Beaux Arts' could have had a very unfortunate issue here.

Mrs Bertie/ Marlow Parents

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Mrs Bertie - urgh, do agree, and having just recently read Lucy Lethridge's "Servants" I've a lot of thoughts about the Forest servants, though mainly re Peter's Room. One of Lethridge's comments is how much servants hated having to call upper class children "Master" or "Mistress" - as of course Mrs Bertie does here as in all the books. It grates. I'd agree Forest's depictions are more subtle in later books.

Mrs Marlow - I'd say the same for Mrs M, who seems to me a complete stereotype, almost a non-existent character in these earlier books - really could be substituted by any mother from a children's adventure story of the period (typical piece of dialogue "Oh Jon!") In the whole breakfast time conversation she doesn't say anything that doesn't relate to worrying about/reproving her children, or expressing interest in Patrick's health.

Geoff Marlow/Jon by contrast say a lot about a lot of things. Actually it's rather sweet (though I'm not sure very believable) that the men are so interested in the minutiae of Kingscote life, and the ins and outs of adolescent friendships.

I have a theory that it's because of the dominance of Commander Marlow that she gets rid of him in later books - it's harder to give the junior Marlows autonomy if he's around, and very difficult to imagine a lot ot things happening - the Thuggery Affair advdenture, the twitting of Edwin and the whole situation that develops there - if he was about the place being masterful and commanding and the natural authority figure. In his absence I think Mrs M herself becomes a lot more interesting as a character - and with a lot more spikiness, which I like - but she never becomes an authority figure in the same way.

Re: Mrs Bertie/ Marlow Parents

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know - this may have been Mrs Bertie's choice. When I was growing up in about that era, we were required to call the people who worked for us by title and surname, and they just used our first names. Except for one dear gamekeeper, who became a great friend when I was about 17 or so (oh dear, that does sound Lady Chatterley-esque, but actually, not - his then mistress and subsequent wife was always there. I used to bum cigarettes off them both!), whom I then addressed by his nickname, and he always, but always, called me "Miss (firstname)". He drove us on our wedding day between the Church and the Reception, and address me as "Miss (firstname)", whereupon I pointed out that this was now incorrect, as I had been, for the last 15 minutes, Mrs So-and-so, and he could call me that if he insisted, or, preferably, just use my name!

But the point is, my parents required that sort of courtesy from us, not from their employees!

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I feel that this book doesn't really get going till the end of the second chapter. The first chapter is introducing place - Trennels, a new character - Patrick, and the topic -falconry. The first half of the second chapter I dislike - agree with what's been said about Mrs Herbert. (And the story about Puss I find hard to believe. Unless Puss was a very tiny kitten a goshawk wouldn't have carried it off across the valley. Attacked it, yes, but a full-grown cat kicking and scratching would be too much for a gos to carry far.)
I agree that the falconry information in Chapter 1 is mostly conveyed naturally enough as part of the story, but I find the supposedly natural conversation between Jon and Geoff a bit too much, and most of the information given is not actually necessary to the story anyway. I think child readers don't really mind having words in stories that they don't understand, as long as they are engaged with the story. They can always look things up if they are interested. I've certainly read enough sea stories without knowing exactly which rope or sail each term referred to.
Falconry as a topic for a childrens' summer holiday book doesn't entirely work, because it's the wrong time of year. Patrick mentions Regina's moult and that he'll have to ask Jon if it's ok to fly her at one point, but the reality is that the peregrine would have been put down to moult in the spring, and be brought back into flying condition only towards the end of a school summer holiday.
I love the way Jon's death is told though; first the juxtaposition of Patrick and Nicola with the Sprog, and the plane diving down the sky; and then Peter meeting Nicola and the subtle, understated but beautiful last paragraph.
I have to mention my favourite bit of the book so far - Lawrie crying because the hat stand will probably end up in a horrible boarding house miles fro the sea - perfect! FL as a whole has some of my favourite comic moments in the whole series.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I suspect the story of Puss has been somewhat embellished in the telling, and even Jon feels no particular desire to contradict it. Forest's falconry research does sound a bit casual by her own account, so I'm not surprised there are errors and implausibilities. But I think the pleasure of the hawking infodumping is the irrelevance, in some ways: when I was a child I devoured factual information for which there was no conceivable use, and the jargon was a very large part of the appeal.

I think when you reflect on Geoff and Jon's conversation in the light of the tensions that Geoff reveals after Jon's death it's really rather well done, actually: as well as giving us some more hawking information, it conveys the strain between them: they contradict and interrupt each other constantly, Jon makes that really rather bitchy remark about Geoff sloping off to fish (shades of Peter, shades of Ginty) when there was hawking work to be done, when in fact, as Geoff points out, it was that his uncle wouldn't let him near the hawks.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Yes it's interesting the massive info-dump she does about falconry compared with, say, Cricket Term, where she doesn't feel obliged to explain anything about cricket at all. (With the result that I read Cricket Term umpteen times and still don't understand how cricket works - and I never cared.)

"All the ties of affection and habit..."

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

The conversation between Jon and Geoff seems to have much more edge re-reading it after TMATT; there's a distinct sense of something hanging in the air between them, and when Geoff lets the elastic snap by admitting to having been so envious of Jon's prospective ownership of Trennels "I could scarcely bear to be polite to him when we met again" it all falls into place. Presumably the scars go rather deep, perhaps almost more on Jon's side than Geoff's - and one wonders, of course, if Jon knows that Geoff (or his side of the family) is going to get Trennels eventually - we don't see much of him, but he definitely gives off a distinct Not The Marrying Kind vibe.

Re: "All the ties of affection and habit..."

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not quite sure how Forest conveys 'absolutely as gay as a goshawk' with such a minimum, but it struck me on first reading, when I hadn't read TMATT, and with redoubled force after it.

Air went solid for a moment

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

That is the most perfect description of a pressure wave. I can remember experiencing that once going up the river to Kirkcudbright on a very hot, very still June morning and thinking "Falconer's Lure" and wondering what it was.

Patrick and Nicola

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Think we need to have a thread about this - how they actually meet up, such an important relationship for the whole series.

What I'm noticing is how arrogant he is right from the start, and how she lets him get away with it. There's the "Hi! You!" from Patrick (would Nicola ever address anyone like that - I don't think so). Then there's "What a very silly question" when she asks if the goshawk belongs to him. Actually it's not a silly question (doesn't it in fact belong to Jon?)

And Nicola does take it all fairly meekly - though she does find his attitude over her gashed thumb funny (and Patrick is put out about this. He doesn't like not being not taken seriously). I do like Patrick's unsentimental references to his grandmother and Uncle Lawrence's deaths, but generally speaking he does seem very up himself, and high-handed to Nicola - although in a way, given the age gap, I can also see it's natural for him to act superior.

It's interesting, too, in chapter three Rowan saying shortly "Master Patrick" was most definite in his instructions, and Nicola realising Rowan thinks Patrick is a bossy so-and-so (but Nicola then thinks Rowan is also bossy). So AF obviously did intend Patrick to be seen as rather arrogant. But must admit I rather agree with Rowan in finding his brand of it approaching obnoxious, and I doubt that's what AF intended.

I wonder if he actually picks Nicola as his friend, over Peter (which would be more natural) precisely because she is younger and so prepared to be more worshipful?

(Sorry, I know I'm not being very positive about FL so far: it's not a favourite of mine, and I'm enjoying reading other peoples' more positive insights.)

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

Just as surprised at Niola being a London lover as a sun worshipper, she always strikes me as a quintessential country girl (even if she hates riding) and we never see enough of her in London to understand precisely the allure of the big smoke for her. I'm also intrigued that Nick has a carefree attitude to money like Mrs M. Is this backed up anywhere else? Isn't Nicola a sensible girl - or is it just she's so unmaterialistic she doesn't see the need to hoard like Lawrie.

The falconry stuff bored me as a child and bores me as an adult, it's such an incredibly niche sport - very fitting for Patrick obviously, but not one that can engage this reader, as is made very clear it's a 24-7 job looking after hawks that no one without hordes of servants could possibly contemplate.

I love Nick horror at the news Karen was a bad head girl - yet another Kingscote chimera shattered, and the foundations laid in wondering if she'll made a good wife, mebbe this was when Forest had the idea of The Ready Made Family.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Falconry does seem a tricky sport to turn into fiction - are there any successful examples? Think it works brilliantly as a motif in Clavell's Shogun (to turn to a very different kind of book!) but it's a very minor part of the whole. For that matter, think the hawks contribute a lot in the other books but they of course they are always a much more minor element.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I really find it hard to think analytically about Falconer's Lure, because it was the first Forest I read, aged 10, as it was in the Top Class library at the back of the classroom at my primary school, along with Jennings, E Blyton, and a couple of books I remember (one was a youthful Crusoe-style scenario and the other one was a brother and sister cross into fairyland, and was better than that sounds). I re-read it several times then but it took me some time to discover the other books. And then it became the one that completely disappeared, no paperback reprints, no copy turning up in the sixpenny box at the secondhand booksellers (well, I think by then it was probably the £1 box, but that is where my copy of The Ready-Made Family came from), until Girls Gone By reprinted it.

And unlike some of those books I read at the same age (I scarcely dare open a Jennings in case the charm has evanesced) it had maintained its hold, while I brought to it all the resonances back and forward.

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Ha! I reread a Jennings a couple of years ago and wished I hadn't. Ransome, otoh, is still very readable. (I also recall the better-than-expected brother and sister crossing into fairyland book, but have no idea what it was called: do you?)

"He'll be dead to the world tonight"

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

This is such a chilling line with the benefit of hindsight, but passes almost unnoticed in context.

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Also, while I love the scenelet of Peter and Nicola at the plank bridge, what parent in their right mind would leave the boy who watched the accident happen break the news to his younger sister? Even if Geoff was prostrated with grief and Pam was dealing with the other children, you'd have thought Rowan might have been given this to do.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

Or even that the Merricks could have broken the news, as responsible adults.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Falconry does seem a tricky sport to turn into fiction - are there any successful examples?

There's 'Kes' I suppose - it's years since I read it, but I remember it conveying something of the wonder of a wild hawk allowing you to be in its presence - as Nicola feels when she meets Regina.

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought of Kes too, but similarly don't remember it well, though there the "bird" aspect was absolutely key and worked better IMO. Am very relieved to hear that falconry isn't so time consuming these days, I checked the British Falconry Assn website and was amazed that it still seem to be flourishing but that information explains it! Agreed there's much to be said for it being a non-girly pursuit, it just doesn't do it for me.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

The entail seems perfectly likely to me, as an archivist; not necessarily as something that's existed since the year dot, but something renewed in successive generations via marriage settlements and wills.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

What I've always wondered and never been able to find out is whether entailment can be changed.

What happens if Giles has no interest in Trennels, emigrates or ends up having only daughters, could Geoff Marlow change things so that others of the family could legally benefit?

Peter and Patrick question--- seeking fan fic

[mainerobin.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the way Nicola and Patrick met, but wonder why he barely gives Peter a thought. I can see he enjoying Nicola's interest in the hawks, but he should know that Peter is the only boy in the family and would probably be eager to hang out with him. I haven't read any of the other non-school books, so I'm wondering... Do they become friends again?

I really enjoyed Nic and Patrick in EOT and enjoyed this first meeting in such detail. I think it was mentioned above that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers would be a good Patrick. That's who I had imagined too.

I really liked getting to know Jon his interest in all the family. I knew from EOT that he dies, but didn't realize it would happen just like that. I wanted to hear more from him, and was distressed that he moved in and out of the story so quickly.


As Peter and Jon were driving off it occurred to me after the conversation at breakfast that Peter might have told Jon about the Easter hols adventure indepth and told him about shooting the German. I'm picturing some good fanfic with this--Particularly Peter's guilt at talking about this forbidden subject, and then his guilt over his terribly-secret-tiny-little-bit of-relief at Jon's death and no one need ever know he blabbed. And his own inner traumas at witnessing two deaths of people he liked (Foley and Jon) though I suppose during the war, that happened to people all the time.

Would also like to see a fanfic about the term between TMATT and FL told from Ginty's point of view. I'm picturing her and Lawrie in London with everyone else at school.

Maybe these already exist. I fear I'm not a fiction writer. I did Maths at school.

Re: Peter and Patrick question--- seeking fan fic

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I love the Peter-and-Jon idea and also, if anyone (perhaps one of the Jennings fans?!) is able to give us some of Peter and Patrick on the Walls of Troy, I would love to read it!!

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

I like the foreshadowing of the financial difficulties in Jon's despised letter from the bank manager (and a lot of bills).

[cleodoxa.livejournal.com]

I think the falconing thing works for me as an example of a living link with the past. That's a large part of what Nicola seems to get out of it, as well as interest in the birds themselves, and the thrill of perceiving something like that is something I share with her. A lot of Nicola's sea-related hero worship is like that, and the falconing interest adds a more idiosyncratic, less archetypal spunky girl touch.

Geoff's childhood.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I like the glimpses we get in this of Geoff's childhood. We don't get told how his parents are killed, do we? I imagine his envy of Jon inheriting Trennels as a boy is made worse by the fact that Jon is living there with his parents, so it's a proper home for him. For Geoff it's a place where he stays because his relatives are being kind.
Also, speaking to the hawks in his Bligh of the Bounty voice. Does that suggest an early intolerance of unreasonable behaviour? Or an inability to empathise with someone who is legitimately scared and sensitive?

[jayb111.livejournal.com]

Hello, joining in here if I may.

FL is my favourite of the holiday books. I liked when I first read it as a child, and was hugely pleased to find it in a library sale many years later.

Picking up on some of the points made in the comments:

My impression was always that Jon was some years younger than Geoff. As someone else said, in his thirties. I think that comes from the fact that Rowan calls him by his name and not the more formal 'Cousin Jon' and speaks to him more as if he's a contemporary of hers than of her parents.

I wonder how frequently Geoff and Jon had met in the last ten years or so? What with the War, Trennels not being available for family get togethers, and them serving in different branches of the forces, possibly overseas.

On the entail, there might have been other brothers between Great Uncle Lawrence and Geoff's father, who might have had sons, all of whom would have come ahead of Geoff in the entail.

There's no good way to hear bad news, but I think given the choice Nicola might have preferred to hear it the way she did. She hates having her emotions on show and this way she had a chance to get herself together before she had to deal with Ann being Ann, Ginty being Ginty and Lawrie being Lawrie. Peter had probably had enough of it all too, which was why he sloped off to be on his own, or find Nicola, who could be relied on not to fuss.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

The problem with Jon being younger than Geoff, though, is that they talk about their past as if they were fairly close contemporaries. Although we're not given an age for Geoff until rather later in the series, his rank in the Navy and Giles's age suggest that he is likely to be in his mid-forties at least. I think the obvious answer is that Forest was nodding, and it's not terribly important anyway, but thinking up scenarios to cover inconsistency is a good game.

Geoff's envy suggests there weren't many people between him and ownership of Trennels when he was 18, I think: if he had a bunch of elder brothers or Jon younger ones, him inheriting would always seem very remote and I don't think it would quite have reached the pitch of 'barely being able to be polite to him.' The difficult feelings seem to arise from being heir presumptive.

I agree about Peter and Nicola: I think he slopes off under his own initiative to intercept her rather than being sent, or even, perhaps, has just slipped off to be alone (he tends to seek solitude when upset), and half-consciously wanders the way she's coming home.

a small detail

[fengirl88.livejournal.com]

I like that description of Peter at breakfast "trying to break into the others' talk, rather like a dog sniffing excitedly to find an opening through a hedge".

Re: a small detail

[learnsslowly.livejournal.com]

So do I!