trennels | Falconer's Lure readthrough: Chapters 4-6 (Reply)

Before we get down to business: a tremendous thank you to the heroic

lilliburlero for so many fantastic posts (talk about a hard act to follow!) and to the mods and book-sharers without whom this would not be happening at all. I am very glad to be with you for one week to talk about Falconer's Lure, Chapters 4-6.

I love the beautiful circularity of this chapter: Pam Marlow's really quite thoughtful abandonment of her mother's approach ('There's nothing you can tell me about pudding-basin hair-cuts. Grandmother used to cut mine and Aunt Molly's like that.'), in favour of a presumably more comely professional job -- even for someone as young as Nicola; even though in general nobody is that fussed about the twins' appearances, beyond mere neatness -- only to find herself snookered by Lawrie. It is rather funny that now-Madame Orly ('the sort of hats you saw in Vogue at the dentist's'! -- poor old Ginty, I hope she got her own subscription a couple of years on) should have taken that approach to hair-dressing, I think: was anyone else surprised? Her later preference for Ginty suggests she prefers feminine, 'nicely presented' girls; perhaps that preference is a general one, but her daughters were always a subsidiary interest to her sons?

This chapter has plenty of scattered reminders that everyone is feeling at least weird, in some cases actually grief-stricken or guilty, about Jon. We have Karen's refolded newspaper (bets on how long this lasts? I can't see a crossword person stopping forever -- my guess is that she starts again at Oxford); Rowan's face 'gone suddenly blank and formal', when she and Nicola meet the Vicar (the next sentence is: 'But the Vicar didn't mention Jon.' -- Forest is subtly but clearly suggesting that even the usually imperturbable Rowan is thrown off balance at the prospect of an unexpected talk-about-the-dead); and, of course, Peter: 'the memory of the plane plunging down the sky and the sudden realisation that something had gone very wrong indeed, was still as sharp as if it had happened yesterday.'

This Falconer's Lure re-read, coming (naturally enough) in the wake of TMTT, has made me wonder more generally about Forest and grief, and how many of her books have a death or a near-death in them: not something we can discuss in detail now, perhaps, with the spoiler issues, but something to keep in mind during the rest of the readthrough? At a conservative estimate, of her thirteen books, I count at least eight with important deaths. All of these seeded references prepare the way, I think, not only for the later, darker books (for all that FL in effect opens with, and then deals with the fallout from, Jon's death, it is still for me one of Forest's more light-hearted, and literally more 'sunlit' novels -- partly because it's so humorous), but for Pam Marlow's momentary lapse of control in Chapter 6, when Nicola sings 'Fear No More'.

The Colebridge Market trip affords Forest the chance for some pretty important exposition, via the Vicar and Rowan, and also allows her to set up most of the tensions (will Captain Marlow leave the Service? who will run Trennels?) and events which will drive the rest of the book: Rowan discovers the Festival leaflet which unfolds all the joys of elocution, singing, regatta and gymkhana... I am charmed by Nicola's ignorance of her talent for singing, and by so many other tiny details of characterisation in this passage: Rowan and Nicola's distinct food preferences (Nicola eating her fish quickly 'to get it out of the way'!); Rowan thoughtfully declining to read the hawk remedy aloud; Nicola's coldness at Rowan knowing her so annoyingly well, when Rowan suggests that she'd better take up 'The Ancient History of the Marlows at Trennels' (and, of course, in the end she does: score one for Rowan).

Apart from it making plot sense (at a Doylist level) -- are there any good Watsonian explanations of why it's Rowan and Nicola, and of how Nicola's hair has managed to grow noticeably longer than Lawrie's in the first place? I remember reading here on

trennels that possibly there'd been some sense of certain older siblings 'pairing up' with younger ones: it's canon that Lawrie turns to Karen for help when she needs it, so perhaps there's something of a tradition of R&N going together, and K&L going together, rather than saddling one older relative with both twins?

The mystery of Geoff Marlow's parents: how and when did they die? Rowan says he was at Trennels at 'our age', i.e. in his teens, so I suppose one can narrow it down a bit depending on presumed birth-date. The wording, 'were killed', doesn't sound much like influenza or similar, or as if one was carried off by apoplexy and the other faded away soon after. Crime? Shipwreck? Expedition to distant lands gone horribly wrong? (This, if not too morbid and remote -- if it is, I apologise for my proclivities -- is your regularly scheduled ...&c.)

Lawrie the Spider and/or Aged Crone makes me laugh every time. I really enjoy the sense that she is privately working away at her craft much more than anyone in the family ever realises.

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Mr Merrick seems like a good egg, doesn't he? I like the balance in FL between comic scenes and the much quieter witty replies which are laced into the dialogue all the time (...and also, of course, the sense that despite all this, the world she's showing us is a precarious place, really, and that -- as it already has done, once -- summer happiness can turn on a dime). I'm not in the least convinced by Patrick's 'All terrifically humane and nothing the R.S.P.C.A. could even begin to object to', but -- at least AF admits into the narrative a degree of approved ambivalence concerning the welfare of the prey? (It's okay if Nicola has a qualm: not if it's Ginty.) Some of my favourite bits about prey actually come later, so I won't trespass on anyone else's commentating territory by jumping too far ahead, but I think Forest does a decent job of building narrative complexity in this difficult territory. Are people still enjoying the falconry at this point? I admit that I like it less than the family scenes, but I don't skip it because some of AF's descriptive writing, and some of her animal writing ('Jael's body, warm and palpitating, in her grasp'), is so good. The development of The Sprog as an independent (hilarious, adorable, unique) character really begins in this chapter, and I LOVE IT. It gets even better later, but she's laying the seeds here.

Nicola and Patrick seem incredibly young at tea-time, in contrast to the near-adult nature of some of their pursuits: Patrick's serious historical reading; even the falconry itself. Do you think Forest is good at writing the various ages she deals with convincingly? Personally I think she is: the teen years are, to the best of my recollection (!) a weird muddle of increasingly mature interests intermingled with outbursts of childishness. Nicola 'acts up' to Patrick, I think, to some extent -- not that she's inauthentic (as she will later inwardly accuse Ginty of being...), but she presents her best and oldest self to him most of the time (as in Chapter 6, when both are panicked in the wood, and she decides not to admit to it, even though Patrick has: 'When you were thirteen and a girl, you had to be more careful.'), and then relaxes back into a more childish role at home. Over the next few books we see her starting to push against that role more and more. Yet the child-like, and sexless, nature of their friendship (as is appropriate to their ages and era) is underlined by Nicola asking Patrick to stay in the bathroom with her while she does her first-aid.

Lawrie has NOT been cured of castleing-in-the-air, despite everything that happened in Autumn Term. I suspect she never will be: 'For now she swam enough to be allowed in the deep end of the school baths, her ambitions were legion: Next year, she would be one of the Under-fifteens in the School Swimming Team; these holidays, she might achieve a rather spectacular rescue if only someone would be so obliging as to put themselves in danger of drowning; she would certainly win the Beginners' Race in the Regatta; and if only Peter or Ginty or Rowan would have the decency to coach her, she was quite sure she would win the Beginners' Diving too.' ...oh, Lawrie. Peter isn't much older than the twins, but he's clearly miles from being a beginner -- do you think they're behind in learning on account of their past delicacy? It seems unlikely that a sporty, sea-favouring family like the Marlows (with, at least at times, their own boat) would neglect this aspect of an all-round education, but perhaps if the twins were constantly ill, especially with chest and/or sinus stuff, immersing them in cold water might have seemed unwise. Lawrie's ambitions seem instantly even funnier when we start to read about her actual swimming, which is clearly quite basic. I'm confused by Peter reneging on the no-ducking bargain, though! His reasoning seems entirely logical (Lawrie WILL take revenges: her character is entirely consistent as to fairness and balance, albeit meted out according to her own weird lights), so I don't see why he'd suddenly change his mind, if he dislikes being ducked himself.

'Even the high walls Patrick used to prance round, saying they were the walls of Troy, and daring Peter to follow because he knew Peter hated even standing on them, seemed lower than they used to be. All the same, he hoped Patrick had forgotten about the walls of Troy. He didn't really think he'd care to walk along them even now.' [my bold] -- Gosh, little!Patrick was a bit of beast, wasn't he? I think this is horribly unkind, and they were, what, six or seven? Children of that age are perfectly well able to understand the idea that others have fears. I am quite alarmed to discover that this re-read is making me like Patrick less: has anyone else found that their opinion of a character has changed quite considerably? I do see his charm, of course, and often find myself caught up in it while I'm actually reading, but thinking about it afterwards: not so much. Not that I am condemning him on the basis of being bratty at age six or seven, of course -- this just stood out as an especially unkind thing to do. Poor little!Peter: the vertigo and fear of heights is evidently very long-standing.

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This chapter is one of my favourites, even though in terms of 'action', comparatively little happens in it. But before we get to the playroom scene, there's some wonderfully-written falconry! I think Jael and the hare gives us Forest at her best, when it comes to the nature-and-animals writing which is one of her marked strengths. It's difficult to pick out quotations from a passage as strong and well-sustained as this one, especially because the writing isn't showy; it's restrained, built up by touches and dabs into a heart-capturing, throat-catching drama of flight and loss and finding, of the victory and the kill. I love the practical tenderness of Patrick carrying Jael under his jacket. One of the superb moments in Forest's treatments of prey -- as I mentioned above -- is Jael's hare: 'The hare's pelt was soaked. In a last effort he had swum the pond, and Jael, no hound to be shaken off, had hovered above, and taken him as he reached the other side.' This miniature tale of exhausted, fruitless effort, in which we still half-want (or more than half-want) the predator to 'win' -- and we know already that she has won -- because we know her, because Forest and Patrick and Nicola have taught us to love her, is so stripped, so pitiless in its wording, that it makes the inherent, inalienable pity of nature felt more immediately than any declaration of pity possibly could.

And so to the playroom: Ginty seeking solace in a familiar old text (and with a family more sympathetic than her own...?); Rowan the self-constituted mistress-of-ceremonies. I think thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds would shun a toy cupboard these days, but some vestigial, archeological interest, on a wet day, seems plausible enough for the late 1940s. In the wrangling and the chatting and the form-filling we see various characteristics which have appeared, and which will appear again, reinforced: Lawrie's thrift (and her commitment to ~justice~ ...my favourite off-the-wall fic idea is modern!Lawrie turning into a passionate SJW-type: this is up for grabs, as I'm over-committed on the fic front already), Nicola's gift for strategic thinking (she's clearly devoted some time to working out her best chance of making bank out of the Festival: and quite right too!). Rowan really has her knife into Ginty -- I think Ginty's remark when Pam comes upstairs (Pam: 'I can't be as young as I was.' Ginty: 'Nor none of us are.') is innocuous enough; maybe the tiniest tincture of morbid, but hardly lugubrious. Is Rowan just so sick of 'Ginty: Woman of Feeling' that everything her sister says has started to grate?

Anyone else surprised that Ann is 'aghast' about the uniform change? It seems an oddly strong choice of word. Does it simply underline her personal conservatism? I love Nicola's hopefulness re: scarlet hats, and am personally regretful that she is doomed to disappointment. Another tiny, perfect detail in this chapter is Peter's fondness for music.

We finally have Rowan's big reveal: she's sprung into it by the exigencies of the uniform change. I really enjoy the sense that there are these bombshells, errors (everyone seems to have thought she wanted to be a games mistress), and even tides of misinformation that have to be fought: Falconer's Lure is a fantastic exploration of how information is shared, managed, hidden and uncovered within a group -- primarily, but not exclusively, the family. I think this will be something to revisit later, especially in The Ready Made Family, Cricket Term and Run Away Home: will the Marlows learn more helpful ways of telling each other things? Do they get better at hiding? After the relative muddle of FL (where the Lower Deck is usually the last to know -- but as in this case, not always), there is, I think, something of a move in the direction of deliberately curating information (Nicola is certainly very keen to manage who knows what, to a perhaps untenable extent?). But is this a good decision for Rowan? Should her parents let her do it? Presumably they could force her to go back to Kingscote, given her age (and class).

I enjoy the contrast between Lawrie's pleasure in performance -- both the silly poem and the serious one -- and Nicola's unintended, unplanned song, continued only because Ann has joined in on the piano. Strong emotion often seems to turn up like this in AF: as the product of a series of quite random, weird coincidences -- that Nicola should happen to choose that song, that Peter should happen to mention 'Sigh No More' and thus necessitate a quick two-line demo, that Ann should begin to play. Devastation surprises. And into this charged atmosphere, with the sibling banter bucketing on -- I love Lawrie's snippet from Choral Speaking [a. k. a. the subject I most wish my school had offered! Anyone else?], and her stern refusal to wander lonely as a cloud or come the dear children for anyone -- falls Lawrie's second poem.

Oh, Forest! These are the moments when I wish she was alive most of all, so I could ask her about her choices -- in my opinion, it's flawless (perhaps almost too perfectly suited for Karen plausibly to have picked it out at no notice? but Kingscote evidently gives a strong literary education, and a lucky choice is always possible), and if you haven't tried reading it aloud I would strongly, strongly advocate doing so: it's such a good poem for vocal performance, but in some ways more difficult than it looks. There are traps; it could be done badly; but one can well imagine Lawrie doing it absolutely brilliantly. The way Forest blends it into this stormy chapter, which opens with a threatening but ecstatic wood and closes with a sky which has cleared once more, is nothing short of masterly, in my view. But I know not everyone likes the inclusion of full poems in novels: what about here, do you feel that three (including the song) in one chapter is too many? Does Lawrie's gift convince you? Something to return to in Chapter 8, I think.

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Well: that was great fun! And now -- with renewed thanks to

lilliburlero for letting me step briefly into her esteemed shoes -- over to you.