Readthrough: Ready Made Family: Chapters 11-13

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

The atmosphere of tension is economically evoked in the first paragraph, and of course it makes perfect sense that Chas, more irrepressible than his sisters anyway, and still presumably full to the gills with adrenalin, should trigger his father's explosion.

Goodness me, do they have Calculated Insolence lessons at whatever AU version of Dartmouth Peter attends? It strikes me that his bearing is, as Nicola observed a couple of chapters back, actually becoming quite officerly, insofar as he meets with a practised and stinging contempt Edwin's attempts to exert unearned authority over him. ' "Not remarkably. Just that they were easy things for us to give him" ' is quite a savage comment on Edwin's propensity not to allow his children to have fun in their own way, 'carefully' articulated though it is.

Rose's 'petrified' look is a red flag, of course, and indicates, I think, that it is not just grief and worry that have provoked Edwin's outburst here, though they doubtless play a part.

Mrs Marlow and Edwin have their own wrangle over the issue of sending Chas to bed without breakfast: human rights issues aside, I'm with Pam on this one—Edwin doesn't get to expect her to be in loco parentis for weeks and then defer to his child-rearing methods once a disciplinary matter arises. Edwin really is reaping the rewards of his neglect of his children, who all in their different, and very characteristic ways, side with the Marlows against him.

I simply adore Chas 'defending the train' for having failed to kill him; his emergence here as an autonomous person responsible for his own behaviour is very interesting, I think. Edwin seems slightly illogically determined to think the worst: accusing Chas both of wilful participation in the excursion and of sheltering behind an excuse he hasn't made. Interestingly, it is Karen who tries to make the excuse that 'Peter took him…', and who also points out that Chas isn't letting Peter take the blame. No-one seems quite prepared for Chas's robust acceptance of responsibility, and like the bully that he no doubt is, for all we see him in more sympathetic light later, Edwin turns to the easier target of Rose, with a notably unjust accusation. His humiliation of Karen is also fairly vile.

Edwin's violence seems to issue from guilt—he knows he has presumed upon the Marlows not just for accommodation but childcare—and embarrassment at his loss of authority. These are related; he would not have lost authority to the extent he has had he not neglected his children. Peter's riposte underlines the extent to which Edwin has failed to be a paterfamilias: in a rather officer-class way, he tells Edwin he's hen-pecked. This assault on Edwin's masculinity is presumably what finally provokes the attack with the riding-crop. The whole episode is interestingly about masculinity, I think: partially under Peter's influence, Chas leaves the ambit of the nursery and becomes distinctly a schoolboy, with the qualities of defiance, quixotic honour and honesty stereotypically associated with such characters, at least in literature; in the absence of Capt. Marlow and Giles, Peter is rather callowly assuming the mantle of male head-of-household; Edwin, by moving in with the Marlows, has relinquished his patriarchal authority, and confirms that relinquishing with violence. It works so well because of Peter's liminality: old enough to formulate an insult to masculine honour in adult terms and have the confidence to deliver it, but at the same time still a child who is smaller* and weaker than Edwin.
*one assumes Nicola exaggerates when she says he only reaches Karen's elbow, but Peter doesn't seem to have his growth spurt until Run Away Home.

Ann's fear for Fob is a really chilling moment, I think.

The sentence about the 'parallel emotions' of the families about Peter and Edwin's behaviour, is dead stylish, though one feels obliged to point out that only one of the two offered violence, and it wasn't the fifteen-year-old boy (with, it must be owned, a bit of a grime sheet in re bullying himself).

Because Miss Forest is pitiless, she doesn't really give us any time to recover before the next bombshell. Rowan's look at Karen 'almost as if she didn't know her' is marvellous—because, of course, she doesn't: Karen's ruthlessness is a genuine surprise. Karen seems also to have concealed her actions from Edwin, or represented them to him in a softer light.

The children's assumption that they will stay at Trennels is painful, I think—imagine how Edwin must feel, hearing that. But no sympathy: he's rather brought this on himself by abandoning his children. Rose's ' "But we don't know [Karen]" ' is devastating, but undeniable: Karen's mother and siblings have made much more effort with the children than she has. How do people read her apparent bafflement in the face of this? Can she be so very dense in emotional terms? Or is this, like her stone mask when Edwin rebukes her for schoolgirlishness, merely a state of shock?

Nicola and Peter's conversation about the riding crop incident is wonderful, as well: that very Marlovian reaction of embarrassment on someone else's behalf. Peter has to remain insouciant ('So tactless of him. A black eye would be much easier') or forego his status as a man able to insult on a man's terms. I sense there's class-based commentary at work here too: Edwin, a social step beneath the Marlows, has offered the sort of violence (a horsewhipping) typically associated with social superiority to one's victim, which makes him more Not Our Sort Dear than ever.

One might have thought that Chas's revelation that Rose had a plan in place for running away, and Fob's that she had some sort of means to finance it might be the cue to call the cops, even if they know she hasn't made her escape by train or bus. But apparently not. Edwin it seems, has so comprehensively ignored his children that the possibility of Oxford as her destination hasn't occurred to him.

The sketch of Mrs Barnes and Sammy as the socially-sanctioned targets of Westbridge's disapproval is nicely-observed, I think, as well as chiming with the book's theme of neglect and carelessness.

I'm not sure that Nicola is at her most logical in deciding to go to Oxford alone, but Forest I think creates the conditions for character-based suspension of disbelief if not entire plausibility. It's a nice touch that the walk along the embankment and the 'saving' of the train, which starts the row that leads to the revelation that scares Rose away, also creates the conditions for Nicola's trip to Oxford, in that the stationmaster feels sufficiently warm towards her to lend her fifteen shillings.




I am from the environs of (and indeed a graduate of) The Other Place, so I'm quite immune to the romance of Oxford. But feel free to wax pornographic lyrical below over Ridley and Latimer and melting down plate for the King (and other Wrong but Wromantic actions) and May morning and the Radcliffe Camera and Wimsey of Balliol and street not being a said word and the home of lost causes and St Mary the Virgin and the leopards of Oriel and all the rest of it. It's also recognisably the Oxford of the 1960s, though, green-lipsticked and bescarfed undergraduates and all.

However I am charmed despite myself by Nicola being so fascinated by Oxford that she has periodically to recall herself to her mission, and her reluctance to ring home. I'm touched by her wanting to have someone to share her discoveries with: rejecting Lawrie and Ginty, and realising painfully that Patrick isn't available to her any more. Her solution of a telegram is wonderfully illustrative of her qualms about whether she's done the right thing, and at the same time sets the mood of a dangerous lull before peril.

Does anyone recognise 'Little Nan is lost and I have gone to find her?'
It's nice that we venture out of 'Oxford proper' a bit onto the Cowley Road, I think: one of the things I like about the wretched place is that it is a real city, not just a village with a stonking great medieval university plonked in the middle of it, controlling everything, like some Other Places I could mention. And Nicola's visit to the Wrong Dodds nicely illustrates her combination of resourcefulness and naïveté. Her conversation with the undergraduate on the bridge is replete with dramatic irony.

(Lawrie and Nicola going to see Lawrence Olivier as Othello: this has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt…might be just me, that one… Mrs Marlow's comment is interesting.)

I enjoy Nicola's frantic re-ordering of her thoughts on the very fortuitous coincidence (disbelief-suspension mechanism duly reinforced) of running across Sammy and his taxi, and the little reference back to Thuggery with her reluctance to go to the police because of Lawrie's treatment by them.

Nicola gets quite an education in Research Methods during the course of this afternoon, doesn't she?

A little further ballast to the suspension of disbelief mechanism is necessary for the next coincidence: but, belief duly suspended.

On a careful re-read, I find Uncle Gerry a rather subtler portrait than I had previously imagined him. I'm interested in his implied social class: a pork-pie hat, highly polished shoes and a camel coat indicate to me the borders between the working and lower-middle-class, and not the sort of person Nicola would consider an 'obvious uncle' at all. (Not that Nicola has extensive experience of uncles, one reflects: though the winsome cousin of Autumn Term suggests that there is at least one on Geoff's side of the family.) I wonder if Forest is playing with the word 'avuncular' here, for that--for a sinister value of the word--Uncle Gerry is, with his 'soppy, blurry' face and plausible manner. Nicola's suspicions, alternating with her firm suppression of them as too lurid, are particularly neatly pulled off, I think; the moment at which she suspects Edwin, only pulled back by the memory of Mrs Clavering's mourning clothes, suggests how convincing Uncle Gerry can be. The exchange about the tattoo is a vivid reminder of how mores surrounding tattooing have changed, if nothing else...

Her reflection that she can't appeal for help to the other café patrons Rose and Uncle Gerry look 'from the point of view of clothes, [...] as if they belonged together' takes us back to Lawrie in Thuggery, and the importance of appearance: but now Nicola's trust in the police seems to be restored.

I enjoy the description of Nicola's knife as a kind of mascot, and then as Boudicca's chariot-wheel: it really has a featured cameo role here, doesn't it? Nicola's suspicions continue to alternate with her dismissal of them: her reflection 'sudden and hurtful as a bee-sting' of the cruelty of pretending to Rose that her mother was still alive, is particularly acute. It occurs to me as it doesn't seem to to Nicola that the husband of Edwin's sister (of whom we're told nothing more, I think than that 'he doesn't get on') or of another unmentioned Clavering sister would not be named Dodd or Clavering and might still be a genuine uncle, but the point, I suppose, is to get to his suspicious refusal to offer Nicola a surname.

The next little episode is a masterly mixture of distinct physical threat--Uncle Gerry picking up Rose, Nicola somewhat fortuituously injuring him with the knife, him kicking her--and the phantasmagorical: Walter de la Mare's 'The Traveller', Priestley and (fascinatingly) An Adventure. Nicola's reference to the latter is in flash-forward (though whether she knew the text at the time is not made entirely clear). The exact relevance of the Moberly-Jourdain incident to all of this I will leave to the comments, but wow. Just wow.

The scene with the estate agent and the prospective buyers (surely a bisexual menage à quatre? This has been, &c.) is deliciously balanced between comedy and the uncanny: I'm particularly fond of the 'bearded peasant' and his stodgy camp. Here, though, Nicola's confused (and perfectly accurate) sentence has the power genuinely to terrify.

In true thriller style, Uncle Gerry hasn't quite disappeared. Nicola's reflection that she hadn't felt truly petrified before strikes me as faintly unlikely, especially if we imagine her to be continuous with the Nicola of Traitor, but perhaps it is a different kind of fear, as Foley was different kind of plausible to Uncle gerry?

A final coincidence, as the taxi that Nicola intercepts turns out to contain...but a nice link back to the events of the morning...

Nicola's pas devant les enfants is a sharply observed moment of dark social comedy, but I do hope that this incident doesn't become utterly unmentionable, for the sake of Rose's future safety... Edwin's mention of the police officer saying that Uncle Gerry was wanted for 'something which happened up north last month' suggests an allusion to the Moors Murders.

Edwin and Nicola's unlikely detente over various cultural matters is charming, though I'm not sure why Edwin being 'no churchgoer' should preclude him having an interest in Edmund Campion, who is fascinating on his own account. He should surely be able to explain to Nicola that in the 16th century religious affiliations were often unstable.

Edwin's moment of vulnerability, when he admits his grief to Rose, does something to rehabilitate him, and the relative happiness of the Dodd household in subsequent books perhaps suggests that he follows through on this by being a bit more open and less authoritarian: this being Forest, though, it's not a Damascene conversion.

The many flash-forwards to Nicola's future life suggest the extent to which this book is concerned with maturation. I am very touched by the tactful elegance of the sunt lacrimae rerum (poor Miranda, asked by Cartwright to explicate the untranslatable!) paragraph: Forest catches very well that Virgilian mood of piercing sentiment and muted hope.

It's a neat touch that Nicola uses one of Mr Tranter's phrases to dismiss Sammy Barnes. What do we make of Karen here?--'rock-bottomish'--as Nicola puts it--at the child she had not really bothered to make the acquaintance of having such a close shave.

I always enjoy scenes of people finding common interest over cultural artefacts, and the Walter Mitty and Peter Wimsey references here are just the thing to lighten the mood. (I'm told Karen's preference for Gervase Fen reflects poorly on her: do you think Forest meant it to?) And Nicola's telling Edwin about the log opens a cautious avenue for a friendship.





There's lots of matter in this two-page chapter: explaining to Fob about school terms; Edwin's friendliness over Peter's Mummerzet and Peter's inner recoil from it; Rose's continued misery (oh, poor Rose!); Karen being 'prefectish' with the infant Dodds, but at least starting to get to know them; the Marlows meaning 'good luck' when they said 'so long'; the relief of not having to consider 'Edwin-their-guest'; and Nicola and Ginty's minute but perfectly pointed exchange over Persuasion.



I'm sorry that I've posted so late this week (unexpected domestic happening). It strikes me that this is a good place to take a break, resuming with The Cricket Term in the New Year. (I notice that there are four Forest-related fics in the Yuletide collection, but there might still be some writers pursued by Yuletide bears, so it seems only fair to let them exit. Are the bears coughing, one wonders?)

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the guest posters: legionseagle, for leading the discussion on Peter's Room, highfantastical and sprog_63 for contributing posts on Falconer's Lure, and jackmerlin, for a post on Ready Made Family. Also to the mods coughingbear, ankaret and thewhiteowl, for model modliness, and to all the contributors to discussion. And to those who have been moved to fic! I've had a lot of fun so far, made some new acquaintances and learnt an enormous amount: I'm overwhelmed by the sustainedly enthusiastic and informed response. I'm looking forward to more in the new year. For now, though, sincere thanks again to you all, and wæs þu hæl.

Comments

[coughingbear]

I love the trains in this book (even if I struggle to envisage a journey to Oxford from the Dorset coast as easy and quick as Nicola's seems to be). If Karen is doing the Marlows local reputation no good over the Tranters' house, Nicola, Peter and Chas are making up for it.

I always think I'm going to find the rescue of Rose implausible and I don't; Forest I think does such a brilliant job with Nicola's thought processes, and the quick moments like the stumble in the garden are brilliant. I do find it hard to believe the police don't want to know any more about Nicola and Rose's experiences.

And I love the train journey home.

Trying to find some excuses for Karen's failure to get to know the children, I suppose I can see that (a) she and Edwin have been out looking for houses a lot and (b) she may be thinking in terms of well, once the older ones are back at school, that will be the moment, and in the meantime it's fine for them all to hang out together. But it's pretty poor, really.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

Reading this I imagine Colebridge Junction as inserted on the line from Bournemouth via Southampton and Reading, which still goes on to Oxford and then up to Manchester and further north (although I think nowadays it's only a fast train). Maybe that makes Colebridge Bournemouth, where AF lived, although it seems smaller in the books.

I find the moment when they spot "Uncle Gerry" across the street one of the scariest moments in fiction. I can only imagine that he was wanted for more serious offences and the police had enough evidence for any court without needing to bring in this incident at all. (Flash forward note to The Cricket Term, there's a passing comment Nicola overhears which implies he killed his previous victim.)

Oh, and Sammy Barnes was very lucky that the worst didn't happen to Rose - as the last person to see her, I imagine the police would have questioned him quite intensively. And being passed out drunk and probably not remembering much wouldn't do him any favours.

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Yes, that moment in Cricket Term casts, astonishingly, an even more chilling light, retrospectively, over RMF.

Everything seems convincing except one detail

[scarletlobster.livejournal.com]

I flinch every time at the arrest of Uncle Gerry. I think it is fine for Edwin to appear: he knows where Nicola and Rose have been heading, so it is very natural for him to drive along that road. But Uncle Gerry's arrest just never convinces me. Why doesn't he remove himself from the scene when he sees that Nicola and Rose have acquired an adult male escort? And what on earth does Edwin say to the police that is enough to arrest U.G. a few seconds later?

I always feel that in real life there would have been all kinds of argy-bargy, with Nicola, Rose and Edwin having to spend hours at Oxford police station making statements, then further police visits and finally a court case. It just feels as if AF has had enough of the Uncle Gerry story and wants to end it in a couple of sentences.

Re: Everything seems convincing except one detail

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

Yes, in real-life it would have been very different, but we're reading fiction, children's fiction at that, so I can see why AF didn't want to dwell any more on Uncle G and moved the story swiftly onwards. One of the most notable features of these books is how fast-moving the stories are and how much is packed in.

Re: Everything seems convincing except one detail

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I agree it's rather perfunctory. I think Uncle Gerry strolls rather than scarpering so as not to attract suspicion, and Nicola seeing him from the taxi a few moments later is another bit of serendipity, as are the policemen walking by as Edwin is about to phone. Presumably considering that 'something happened up north' (the allusion is sufficient, I think, in the context and the mid-60s, to suggest he's a murderer) there's already a police alert out for someone fitting Uncle Gerry's description, perhaps including the tattoo, which these exceptionally on-the-ball bobbies spot, providing reasonable enough suspicion for an arrest? In reality, of course, I'm sure Nicola and Rose would be asked to give a statement at least, even if their evidence isn't required in court later.

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

In the extremely inconsequential department: I just now, this minute, came across the derivation of "Not pygmalion likely," which I had always skimmed over as a verbal oddity. As y'all may know already, when G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion was first produced in 1914, Eliza's exit on the line "Not bloody likely" caused a huge stir and catchphrases like "What the Bernard Shaw are you doing?" and "Not Pygmalion likely" became popular. I'm impressed that this mouthful seems, at least where Forest was concerned, to have stuck around for fifty years...

Family territory.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Karen's hopelessness with the Dodd children stems from the fact that they are in her own mother's house. In that house Karen is used to the role of being 'one of the children', and her mother has the role of being the Mother of the house. So the Dodd children become just three more of Mrs Marlow's children, and Karen at nineteen doesn't have a clue how to step into that role. But once in her own house she seems to take on the 'mother role' and she and the Dodd children seem to get on well fairly quickly.
Similarly, I very much like Lilibulero's analysis of the masculinity shown in the scene between Edwin and Peter. Peter is trying to step into his absent father's role because he is defending his mother - 'Didn't you hear what she said?' The use of a whip rather than just hitting Peter with a fist shows Edwin trying to take back the role of father/teacher/ older authority figure in an era when punishing children with a cane was the norm in schools. He is showing Peter that they are not equals - men of equal age and status would be more likely to use fists in anger. Edwin's temper and loss of control comes from feeling that he is not in charge of his territory - a point which Peter has just taunted him about.

Re: Family territory.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about Karen - I think it's very hard to take on a new role when you are in the midst of your birth family. As it is, she continues in the role she's used to - retreating into the library at every opportunity. From Cricket Term, we do know that changes, once she has a place of her own.

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Chas leaves the ambit of the nursery and becomes distinctly a schoolboy, with the qualities of defiance, quixotic honour and honesty stereotypically associated with such characters, at least in literature

I really like this analysis! One of the things this particular re-read has led me to focus on is the Dodd children as individuals, more concentratedly than I perhaps have in previous readings. I very much agree with you here.

Thank you for all your marvellous recaps; it's been a pleasure. Looking forward to resuming next year! :)

Edwin’s Violence

[antfan.livejournal.com]

The whole episode is interestingly about masculinity, I think

Yes, like others, I think you are spot on there. One thing I think is interesting is Peter’s response – it’s the only time in the book he shows any warmth or sympathy towards Edwin (“poor chap”). It’s as if he recognizes what has been going on between them, a power struggle of various kinds, and actually feels more kindly towards Edwin now that he has let slip the mask of authority and given an emotionally honest (ie violent!) response, and one that maybe of its nature recognizes Peter’s own masculinity/status and that he is not just a child. (In a way, I suppose a beating is what you would do to a child, but in another way I think it’s recognizing that Peter is strong enough to take it.)

Ann's fear for Fob is a really chilling moment, I think.

Now I don’t read this line the same way at all. I think the fact that it’s Ann reacting this way (ie not AF’s favourite character) and that even Ann then recognizes that she is overreacting (she “genuinely thought" only at that "moment” – ie thought wrongly), is strongly indicating to the reader that Edwin is not dangerous, or inherently brutal.

The sentence about the 'parallel emotions' of the families about Peter and Edwin's behaviour, is dead stylish

Yes, and if it's also literally true then what intrigues me is how the parties divide up between the “parallel emotions”. Obviously Karen (and maybe Edwin) think Peter has behaved abominably, and the younger Marlows/Dodds are all on the opposing side. But what about Mrs M and Rowan? It’s very hard to believe that they would think “Edwin had behaved unforgivably and Peter had been perfectly right” – it just does not sound like them. I’d think they would be in the middle, but we’re told there are only two attitudes – so maybe they actually agree with Karen on this? Somebody must – at least that’s the way it sounds, as if it’s not just Karen vs the world. And I can’t imagine Ann, the only other semi—adult, endorsing the violence, because it’s so against her nature. (And if Mrs M had really found Edwin unforgiveable surely they wouldn’t all be sitting down to breakfast.)

Putting together Peter and Ann’s reactions, and maybe Mrs M and Rowan’s too, I think we’re supposed to feel that what Edwin has done is understandable and within the bounds of acceptable human behaviour.

Re: Edwin’s Violence

[antfan.livejournal.com]

...though of course, readers will take it very differently according to their own personal outlooks. It's strong stuff.

Re: Edwin’s Violence

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

My reading was that most of them felt both emotions simultaneously. Peter was deliberately annoying - but Edwin's response was unacceptable even in an era when corporal punishment was normal.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Isn't Edwin's sister the primary caregiver for their father? I rather suspected that meant she was unmarried.

Nicola knows the village

[(Anonymous)]

Nicola really knows the locals in this book - Mrs Tranter's sister, who the village gossip is, the Sammy story. I picture her in the kitchen polishing spoons while Mrs Bertie talks.
Pip

Re: Nicola knows the village

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, I love "Her name's Gert Handyside and she lives in Compton Marshall"; also the sensible way in which she decodes the nickname "Chalky" for the train driver and makes a point of saying "Goodbye Mr White."

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

Shamefully, I can--not sympathize with Edwin's behavior (in the scene where he hits Peter) but imagine myself in his place. A lot of my own reactions seem as if they would produce similar results (possibly without physical violence) and I project them on Edwin as follows: shyness in the sense that he doesn't have a natural sense of how to interact with people (especially not siblings-in-law young enough to be his own children), the prolonged tension of having to live in someone else's house, a fondness for rules carefully observed in all contexts and an extreme dislike for having other people gainsay, overcome, or remake his own rules in an area where he considers he should be in charge (his children in this case), and a touchpaper temper.
Sorry, that was a long sentence and I'm not sure it made any sense, but these are the inner reactions I posit in Edwin at this point, and I do identify with him and thus find him less dislikable than I think a lot of people do.
I actually find him, or possibly the whole situation, slightly reminiscent of another children's-book favorite, Diana Wynne Jones' The Ogre Downstairs. (Somebody here must have read it, yes?) Both concern "blended" families in the parlance of the time, forced into cramped quarters together and quarreling violently as a result, leading eventually to an explosion and corporal punishment (?) on the part of the father figure, after which someone runs away and provokes a reconciliation. Like the Ogre, Edwin seems to possess a deadpan sense of humor which it takes time for his step-relations to catch on to, another thing I like in him.
(Would anyone like to write a fic in which Peter and Chas are given magical chemistry sets? Imagine the possibilities...)
My thoughts, jumbled as usual. I'd better go back to working on Yuletide...

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I thought about the Ogre Downstairs myself during some of the earlier discussions. I love that book! Imagine Peter stuck on a high window ledge after a flying experiment gone wrong?
Another book which comes to mind, although it's about a real father not a step-father is The Greatest Gresham.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

That's so interesting! I think some of the things you've said might be why I find it easy to sympathise with Edwin too...and I love The Ogre Downstairs (and the Ogre) also, yet while both books are two of my absolute favourites I've never, ever thought of them having similarities before!

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

I'm sorry to say The Ogre Downstairs was the book which meant I'd never read any more Dianne Wynne Jones (apart from the Tough Guide to Fantasyland, of course), because the hair-trigger temper stepfather was just too much like home, and just too much (it was easier to take RMF because it was less the focus of the book - Edwin's distant rather than hostile and present for most of it - and also I was a bit older and the whole set up is less desperate - if RMF had been written from the point of view of Rose, say, or even Chas I think it would have been quite like The Ogre Downstairs.

But there's a generation thing, too, in that I think from what people tell me that the best part of Wynne Jones were written in the 80s and 90s, when I was the wrong age.

Nicola's trip round Oxford.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I've got nothing against Oxford, but I've always found Nicola wandering around Oxford a bit annoying. Granted, she doesn't yet know that Rose is in actual danger - probably just sitting outside an empty house, but she is sightseeing while a child is missing! She seems to choose to wander up quiet lanes rather than main streets, and as for stopping to go up the church tower -really?! Surely she could have asked at the station the quickest way to the Post Office.
It rather reminds me of the Thursday Kidnapping, the only AF I chose not to buy when GGB reprinted it, because I couldn't cope with the story of the children pratting around when a baby was missing.
I also wonder where Sammy dropped Rose off in Oxford and why. Did he get lost and just let her get out telling her she could walk from there? I'd like to see the scene where Edwin confronts Sammy later and asks him what the hell he was playing at taking a child on a trip like that and abandoning her. As a previous post has said, Sammy would have been the main suspect if Rose had been found dead, and would probably have been convicted for it.

Re: Nicola's trip round Oxford.

[antfan.livejournal.com]

To be fair to Nicola, I'm not sure she thinks Rose is in mortal danger, just in need of fetching home?

I'm a bit unmoved by the Oxford sightseeing, perhaps because like Lilliburlero I'm just unmoved now by the whole romance of Oxbridge thing. Though when I was fourteen or so I was very struck by it all, much like Nicola, except that in my case it was basically because of Brideshead Revisited on the telly. Still, I don't think Forest does do quite such a good job on Oxford as some of her other locations - say, Wade Abbas in End of Term - it all feels a bit touristic to me.

Once Uncle Gerry appears it does get truly gripping. (And Nicola, just like Patrick in TA, has to make a decision about whether to get into a car...with momentous results.)

The scene on the train on way home, though, and "there are tears of things", is one of my very favourite bits in the whole series.

What's the deal with Persuasion?

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I’ve always thought the link went a bit like this:

Karen wants to make an apparently unsuitable marriage, Mrs Marlow (being Lady Russell) is the voice of prudence/common sense, Karen (unlike Anne Elliott) holds firm, the rest of the family meet Edwin and think Karen is mad, but when Nicola finally gets to know Edwin she realizes that he has value, and that adult relationships are not always about commonsense but sometimes messy/you need to follow your own instincts (ie maybe Karen was right all along).

However, this readthrough has made me doubt. For one thing, there’s Karen’s extreme ruthlessness to the Tranters. Jane Austen heroines typically become better people as the result of finding the right person. (In Persuasion, Anne’s kindness to an old friend who is sick is instrumental in bringing about her happy ending…Karen and the Tranters, a (deliberate?) inversion?)

Maybe what Nicola has in fact understood at the end is that Edwin is the one that has succumbed to persuasion, and entered into a relationship he’s not whole-hearted about…this is why Nicola is sorry above all for Karen on the train journey. We know Karen did persuade him into it (“I’ve only just talked him round”) that he’s apologetic in his letter to Mrs Marlow, suggesting he has doubts.

It could also explain the moment he snaps with Peter – being told he should have had the “courage of his convictions” catches him on the raw.

Then there’s Nicola’s comment in Cricket Term – “it was more now not seeing why he’d married her” suggesting Nicola perceives Edwin as not truly in love.

It maybe explains what I find hardest to stomach in Edwin (unlike many, I don’t actually think he’s a bad father) which is his nastiness to Karen – the schoolgirl comment in particular. Is this resentment at being manouvered? (Not that I think the Edwin/Karen relationship is doomed. But it’s definitely messy.)

Sorry to write such an essay but would be interested to know how other see the Persuasion link.

Re: What's the deal with Persuasion?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really see parallels; I think I just take Persuasion to be a kind of yardstick of Nicola's development over the course of the book. She's too young for it at the beginning; by the end she's not. At that age you grow up in spurts, and I think the implication is that Nicola hasn't just accepted her feelings for Patrick, she's also grown up a lot in various other ways over the course of the book. And we see that growing-up process continue in the flash-forward; a Nicola who can read "sunt lacrimae rerum" and connect it to that train journey with Edwin and Rose is a Nicola who is well on the way to adulthood.

--Katy

Local names

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

i love the way there's a scattering of families in Westbridge who have been there since the sixteenth century, and probably longer. As well as the Marlows and the Merricks, there are the Catchpoles and the Barnses (with a streak of, ah, mental instability passes on from father to son). And I'm always particularly pleased that Doris is descended from Adam's family, and they still live in the same place.