Falconer's Lure readthrough: Chapters 4-6

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

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.

*

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.

*


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.

*

Well: that was great fun! And now -- with renewed thanks to lilliburlero for letting me step briefly into her esteemed shoes -- over to you.

Comments

Rowan's decision

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the post - really enjoyed reading it, and am generally finding FL really warms up with subsequent chapters. The hawking passages become absorbing - I enjoyed the bit in the wood, but really felt for the hare, perhaps especially because it is a hare and they are such unusual and rather special beasts now. I also felt much warmer to Nicola and Patrick's friendship than in the earlier chapters. Did think there was a tad too much poetry though,seeing as you asked.

You asked: But is this a good decision for Rowan? Should her parents let her do it?

This is what I really struggled with in these chapters, and to be honest basically felt Capt Marlow in particular a selfish pig. He decides they're all going to move to Trennels - disregarding the opinion of his wife, who will be living there full time - because he thinks it will be nice for his retirement. But then rather than do the farming himself, he lets his 17 year old daughter take it on, when not only is she young and ignorant of farming, but she will never inherit Trennels - and again, completely disregarding the opinion of Mrs Marlow. And Mrs Marlow is such a sap she just lets herself gets overridden, (as is predicted in thoroughly patronising style by her own daughter "he's not going to be impressed by any wails about how sad it is that dear little Rowan will have to stop being a bouncing school child.")

Well, he should be. Especially as said daughter is doing pretty well even to be considering training for an architect (and what's all this stuff about her maybe being "finished" to get a decent job? That sounds really odd. Isn't "finishing" for dumb deb types not for competent girls like Rowan?)

Someone's going to make the point that he's paying Rowan a compliment by thinking her capable of it and that Peter would have been lined up for it if he'd been a bit older...yes, yes, and NO. Sorry. It sucks, it really does.

And Mrs Marlow is ridiculously passive (why does nobody ever suggest she do it? Mind you, if I'd just raised eight children to semi-independence, been rehomed by the blitz, forced to move to the country, and then someone suggested I become a farm manager, I'd sock them).

I suppose what it brings home to me above all is that in this books the Marlows really are generations older than in the later ones, and all this worshipping of Daddy and his naval career and family duty therefore reads very differently. But, being more comfortable with the later books, I find it incredibly jarring. I'm glad AF continued the Marlows over such a long time period, and I'm sure she made the right decision to update the backround - putting them in 1940s aspic would just have been too odd and lost them any contemporary audience I think - but there is a price that it produces this kind of dissonance. For me that happens in the earlier books, though I guess others may find the later books more jarring.

Re: Rowan's decision

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

I feel perhaps Mrs Marlow's financial irresponsibility wouldn't make her the ideal choice for running a farm (or anything else).

But I agree it's all pretty unfair on Rowan.

Re: Rowan's decision

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely: it is an extra-ordinary decision. Yes we are looking at a mid 20th century situation from a 21st century, perspective, but even so: what would Rowan ever get out of doing this?

I had a few thoughts on why Pam may put up so little objection.
Perhaps it suits Pam well too. She may well view the thought of being isolated at Trennels with trepidation. Since having the children she has only had a total of two and a bit terms without at least one child at home and they were in her home in London. Perhaps she doesn't like it? Furthermore, if she didn't go to school herself, she may, like Patrick, under rate things like 'might have been Games Captain'. My third idea presumes on future reading, so I'll be a bit oblique: in RMF Pam Marlow is absolutely clear that she will not stand in Karen's way re big life changing decisions because that is what her own mother tried to do and their relationship has suffered from it. Rowan is only a year or two younger than she was then, and she may be influenced here too by that memory. Plus of course the idea of a career for a girl would be less central to their education - Ann thinks in terms of teaching music or nursing, Karen (later) thinks in terms of NOT teaching - but nothing else really comes to mind; I don't get the impression that Rowan really thinks about architecture seriously - simply that she has outgrown the notion that being a Games Mistress would be a pleasant extension of the nice bits of being at school. My point is that in contemporary context, a girl training professionally (other than teaching or nursing) is not the norm. But even given all that: I think it is a ridiculous decision and the adults (including Giles) are highly selfish to have considered it, let alone accepted it.

Makes a good story though, and keeps Captain Marlow out of the picture - which is an absolute pre-requisite for a children's adventure story and a rare nod to the genre from AF. (Pam somehow doesn't count, does she?!)

Re: Rowan's decision

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Glad it's not just me who feels this way! I don't get the impression though that Mrs M is secretly hoping that Rowan will stay home and keep her company, she's fairly plain she opposes the idea - and as to not wanting to interfere, there's a big difference between interfering in a child's love life, and interfering when they are falling on their sword.

Actually Mrs M says what she thinks, and she is absolutely right in her opinion I reckon, but where she's very wrong is thinking that this is her husband's decision to make, not hers.

Mrs M is rather infantilised by everyone, it seems to me, even by her own husband "don't worry your mother". Maybe because she was a very young bride, or because she's genuinely a bit flighty (with money, anyhow) but actually she seems to be completely right in her instincts just rubbish at asserting them.

Re: Rowan's decision

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Also, we don't have much sense of Pam's interests at this point (or ever, really? apart from her hunting, of course, which Rowan does end up liking), but presumably she'd have had her fair share of friends in London, had been about a bit, etc. It's not the 1810s, and everyone in rural areas having to make do with whoever silted up in the village because there were no other options at all -- Pam must have things she actually likes doing, and people with whom she likes spending time. I can't see that a teenage daughter would necessarily even be a particularly good companion, unless they happened to be very simpatico! I know Rowan is not given to stropping, but still: she's not Pam's peer.

Re: Rowan's decision

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

But at this point in the story, Pam has only ever been a summer visitor to Trennels, hasn't had a chance to make friends in the area, the obvious neighbour who might become a friend (in theory) is about to go and live in London. I think she would be feeling a bit anxious about what happens when they all go back to school. Yes she would meet people hunting, and doubtless move into the horsey circles, but they wouldn't be there at breakfast or in the evenings: and she hardly has a chatty cosy relationship with Mrs Bertie. I think she would have been extremely lonely without Rowan. The odd snippet we get, it always seems to me that she and Rowan, do in fact get on well, but I'm not sure that I think she accepted the idea because of this, just at a subconscious level didn't put up much of a fight? In fact if you add in the rationing and financial aspects that have been suggested there are a lot of reasons for her to say her piece (that she didn't think Rowan giving up school to farm was a good idea) but not push the point! It was therefore easy as well as very convenient for Geoff to prioritise Rowan's voice, on the grounds "it's her life".

Re: Rowan's decision

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Surely "don't worry your mother" is just about the fact that if you've got eight children, you'd spend your life in a constant froth of anger and terror if all of them were troublemakers? I don't think you have to be particularly patronising to tell your kids to be good under the circumstances.

Re: Rowan's decision

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It's an absolutely barking decision and a dereliction of duty on the parent's part because it isn't necessary. If Rowan had genuinely discovered an interest she might have waited to get has A levels. In the mid 30s my great uncle didn't take up a grammar school place because the family couldn't afford it and he felt the loss the rest of his life even though there was no alternative. I find it hard not to see Rowan regretting it though no doubt as a Marlow she will delude herself into thinking it her free choice and thus her cross to bear

Re: Rowan's decision

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

There's never a satisfactory explanation to my mind as to why they can't employ a new farm manager, to work in parallel with Mr Tranter until he retires, and then take over.
To go for a Doylian explanation (I too had to run and find out) Maybe AF was already thinking of the plot for EOT and Lois Sanger wasn't going to be able to do her thing if Rowan was there being games captain.

Re: Rowan's decision

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That's the question I always asked. No bright young person wanting to apply new agricultural ideas? I suspect your doylian reason may be the nbest option.

Re: Rowan's decision

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

"I suppose what it brings home to me above all is that in this books the Marlows really are generations older than in the later ones, and all this worshipping of Daddy and his naval career and family duty therefore reads very differently. But, being more comfortable with the later books, I find it incredibly jarring. I'm glad AF continued the Marlows over such a long time period, and I'm sure she made the right decision to update the backround - putting them in 1940s aspic would just have been too odd and lost them any contemporary audience I think - but there is a price that it produces this kind of dissonance. For me that happens in the earlier books, though I guess others may find the later books more jarring."


I feel the complete opposite. I wish all the books had been set in the late 40s period because I find certain details in the later books very jarring. I found it odd reading them in the 80s that although the twins and their friends were my age they behaved and talked completely differently to my peers.
I think if they had been kept in one period, they might have been more widely read and known, as things that contemporary readers didn't 'get' would have been accepted as part of the period. Arthur Ransome's books are still in print and Enid Blyton seems to be having a revival, not to mention all the classics set in the past. Readers accept the 'two-servant poor' family in a book set in the past but it's very odd set in the eighties.

Re: Rowan's decision

[antfan.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating that we respond so differently, especially as we were both reading the books for the first time in the 1980s.

I wonder if a lot of it is which books you are most familiar with first, and then get "set" in your head? But I don't think I'd ever have developed a Marlow fascination based on the earlier books - for me it's End of Term to Cricket Term (inclusive) that are the real "heart" of the series. And I think if she'd kept the books in the 40s they would have been inevitably much more staid and conventional stories - as the earlier books do read, to me, I'm afraid.

And I don't think the Marlows would ever been popular like Blyton or Ransome either. Ransome had such a huge hit with the the first book and then stayed firmly in genre (and how many people ever read the rest of the series - I didn't read many?) Blyton also stayed in genre for each series (though she had series covering every genre) and she also wrote for much younger children in a much blander and more accesible style. And her books aren't really set in any particular time or setting but a peculiar blyton world of their own, so they don't date that much.

Forest, by contrast, skipped about from genre to genre even within series, produced books fairly infrequently, and (I'm being a literary snob here maybe) also wrote in very sophisticated language about some fairly sophisticated themes and topics - religious belief etc - and with a lot of nuance and psychology. They stand reading again (and again!) as adults because of this, but for the same reason must have always appealed to a fairly narrow child audience.

I think if she'd stuck to novels about Kingscote she would have solved things best, because Kingcote is such a world of its own, and I think it's only the bits outside the school that really date (eg Giles in Autumn Term, Patrick in London in Attic Term ). I can imagine she would have built up a much bigger readership that way. On the other hand, I'd hate not to have Peter's Room or Ready Made Family!

Re: Rowan's decision

[hooloovoo_42]

I've read all the Ransome books, many times! Part of it was because I always wanted to sail. Also, they had girls in much more adventurous roles than other books. Yes, George in the Famous Five was adventurous, but it was always down to her wanting to be "like a boy". In the S&A books, Susan was the domesticated one, along with Peggy to some lesser extent, but they girls were every bit as into the adventures as the boys and weren't constantly being patted on the head and told to stay out of things, like Anne was.

Re: Re: Rowan's decision

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

I too loved, read and re-read Swallows and Amazons series as a child, but I don't find I enjoy them as much as an adult as I do these. Do you? Also how is that time line managed? There are an awful lot of them with not much ageing of the characters (and to my mind not much character development either).

Re: Re: Rowan's decision

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

I've also read them all many times! They were my favourite books for years, as a small child, despite being phenomenally unsporty myself. I was pretty much convinced that I WAS Titty.

Re: Rowan's decision

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

And I don't think the Marlows would ever been popular like Blyton or Ransome either.

I agree. I think the relative difficulty and extreme darkness of the Marlowverse would probably always have stopped them from becoming mainstream children's classics. RMF is an outstanding book, but it's almost sui generis -- only in the crudest sense can it be compared to 'issues books', I think. And her handling of literary and religious themes is, I entirely agree with you, very sophisticated throughout: TPB and TPATR benefit extraordinarily from having read a lot of Shakespeare (something increasingly few child readers will have done, if there even are any new child readers of AF? other than children of existing fans); optimally the complete works. I don't think it's by any means impossible to enjoy her at a more casual level, but getting the most out of her requires either pre-existing wide reading (and knowledge of religious history, etc. -- not only twentieth-century but sixteenth- and seventeenth-), or the willingness to do a lot of running & finding out. It's great if you like this kind of allusive style! I do, and I'd hazard many, even most, at trennels do -- but it's almost died out of children's lit., as far as I can tell. There used to be so much more of it, albeit rarely as well done as AF.

Re: Rowan's decision

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Agree with all you say here (and I'm VERY much looking foward to the discussions of the historicals). You say there used to more of the "allusive style" in children's lit - wondered what examples you were thinking of?

Re: Rowan's decision

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

I do wish Pam Marlow's characterisation was more developed in FL. I think there's far more to get to grips with in later books (perhaps not coincidentally, when Geoff is out of the picture...), and I do actually like her quite a bit -- but FL is not Pam at her most interesting. Of course there's always a lot to be unpicked, seeing as it's Forest! But compared with End of Term, for instance, I end up a bit frustrated.

'Finishing' for Rowan seems very odd. I wouldn't have thought the Marlows were in those circles socially, nor able to afford a Season? It just doesn't make sense, really. Perhaps AF meant something more like a couple of terms at cooking school in London (living at home) with a posture class, or whatever, rather than the archetypal finishing school abroad.

Re: Rowan's decision

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's a pity we don't see more of Pam Marlow. All of this is evidently going to be a huge unheaval for her, but we never really see her thoughts on it. She'll be more developed later, but I suppose Forest hadn't quite cottoned on to the fact that she was writing books in which all the parents needed to be people too ;-)

Re: Rowan's decision

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

(I really like the moving timeline, myself. Part of the pleasure of AF for me is witnessing the craftsmanship of her approach to different eras, styles of living, etc. -- I don't say it always works, and I'm sure it contains many inaccuracies, but it's fascinating. It's not just the pop culture references: the whole tone and tenor of the books shifts between AT/TMTT and RAH.)

Time line - sort of ... bit of a red herring

[sprog-63.livejournal.com]

Have you read Dick Francis? He wrote a book a year from about 1963 throughout the 20th Century and did the same thing: set them all in the present-as-he-wrote-them. It makes a fascinating chronicle of C20 life albeit in a very particular context - but one which embraces class issues. I enjoy this aspect (as well as the stories!) But as nearly all are stand alone this does not cause the problems for him or reader that this approach over a similar number of decades but with far fewer books about the same group of children does.

Re: Time line - sort of ... bit of a red herring

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Maeve Binchy is another - her books reflect the changes in Irish society over a long period.

Re: Time line - sort of ... bit of a red herring

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

No, I never have! Will have to look out for him. Thanks for mentioning it -- I find the way authors handle time so interesting, if that wasn't already apparent. :)

Re: Rowan's decision / timeline.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

It's the moving timeline that creates all the debate about Rowan's decision. In 1948, it would be entirely normal for a child to leave education and start work before the age of 18. I'd bet everyone on Trennels knows of an elderly acquaintance or relative who couldn't go to university/train for chosen career because either their family couldn't afford it and/or their family needed an extra wage coming in. Admittedly it would be less usual for that to happen in an upper class family, but it was still fairly normal for a daughter to stay at home to help the family in various ways (keeping a widowed parent company, for example). And in 1948 Rowan would have had a social life in the country - not just the hunting/ horsey set at parties, but in daily life there would have been a lot of people working on farms, and more young people growing up in the village.
By the early eighties though, when RAH is set we are into the era of student grants for all, an expectation that any reasonably bright child will go to university, and a huge choice of potential careers for girls. Also, by the eighties, farms which had once employed twenty workers were only employing a couple of people at most, and young people had moved from the country to the town because they couldn't afford the house prices, so a country life would become a more lonely life for Rowan.

Re: Rowan's decision / timeline.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

You're right in a way - obviously what would have seemed appropriate in one period is quite outrageous a bit later. (There's also the fact that probably all of us know that Rowan won't turn out to be happy with her choice, and that's maybe colouring our responses.) But - I'm not sure that's sufficient explanation, really. Because when she's writing about Kingscote, Forest is very subversive of established values right from the start. There's no sense of the girls worshipping the headteacher or prefects, for example - it's fairly clear that Miss Keith, Miss Cromwell, Miss Redmond et al are fallible and capable of being unfair, and that the girls know this, and no sacrificing oneself for the sake of the school kind of moral code. The hierarchy is often poked fun at.

BUT then suddenly in the family setting we have Daddy is perfect, Big Brother Giles is perfect, and of course a mere girl like Rowan should sacrfice herself for the greater good of their naval careers. It's this kind of attitude that grates on me - an assumed respect for traditional hierarchy and authority that Autumn Term so gloriously disregards. It's as if my exapectations of Forest that have been created as a reader in the earlier books are being now disappointed - she's gone all Chalet School on me somehow.