trennels | Readthrough: Run Away Home, Chapters 1-4

lilliburlero.livejournal.com posting in

We begin with Ginty being seen off to Keswick: it's a characteristic detail, I think (and one that makes me sympathetic to Ann, who gets rather a raw deal in this book) that Ann minds that Ginty doesn't wave goodbye, where Nick and Lawrie hardly notice and couldn't care less.

Nicola plotting how to deal with the coughing-bear dress rings very true to such adolescent predicaments to me, but Lawrie's whingeing seems a trifle overdone, even to strike a foreshadow of a disrupted Christmas.

And, our first sight of Edward! I think one of the things this book--Forest's patchiest to my mind--does very well is characterise this troubled, really pretty unloveable character. What motivates Nicola to cover for him, do you think?

Giles Marlow dresses like a knitting pattern. Over two years without a long enough leave to get himself home does seem a bit rough, mind, so let him have his civvies for now. And poor old Geoff: in-universe explanations for why the Service is being quite so exigent? The reference in Chapter 4 to Chas watching Secret Army dates the action to 1977-9.

Geoff's long absence does allow Forest to introduce the discussions about gender roles that arise shortly afterwards. "Wives must", ugh, Giles. (There will be a lot of ugh, Giles in the following.) Lawrie's riposte is too daffy to be very effective, but at least there is a riposte, I suppose.

What do people make of Giles's argument with Ann? On the one hand, I feel Ann is being nobbled rather--what little we hear of her anti-war arguments seem unrealistically feeble, I think, for someone who's grown up in a Services household yet managed to develop pacifist leanings; on the other, Forest contrives to make it sound oddly like Giles has lost his argumentative high ground, even though she's determined to see things from his perspective. He tries to bail out when Ann still feels there's points to be made: 'call it quits'; 'repeating arguments Giles was satisfied he'd demolished' (my italics). There's a note of disapproval in 'bringing religion into it', but from the point of view of a believing Christian of whatever denomination faith is surely relevant to the ethics of war, and has unquestionably historically shaped them? Giles's flippancy feels ugly to me, if it's sufficient to make Ann 'distressed and confused'.

I'll leave discussion of the scuffle with Edward to the comments: there's a nice unmarked look back to Ready Made Family in Nicola's immediate alarm that she's witnessing a kidnapping, where Giles is happier to trust to adults' good faith.

I'm interested in the ways Forest finds to curdle our sympathy with Ann: her concern for a runaway child on a winter night turns within a page to her demonstrably foolish statement that having the law on one's side is the same as being in the right. It seems framed in an unnecessarily binary way: it would be much more satisfying, and somehow more characteristic of Forest, if Ann were to argue, for example, that she didn't like the idea of him going back into institutional care, but surely it's preferable to hypothermia or him being picked up an Uncle Gerry type?

Ann carrying things for Lawrie forms an interesting parallel to Giles's rather insistent gallantry on the point of carrying things and driving people places, too: a man offering to take a burden is a gentleman, but a woman is a drudge. Huh.

This is the first time that Giles has seen Trennels since the summer holidays the family spent there with Jon ~~Before The War~~: and since Giles's relationship with his cousin was closer than the rest of the siblings', I'm minded to be Nice to Giles and remark that it can't be with unmixed feelings that he does so.

Lawrie turning from her misery to contemplating a trip to Paris for her grandmother's funeral is great, I think: perfectly topped by Nicola's recognition that Mme Orly would appreciate it too.

There's been some discussion of Rowan's advice to Nicola already, but what do people make of it? I recognise with a sense of mild horror the less-than-logical creed with which I was brought up: it never really does any good to talk about anything, because if the relationship is 'genuine' you'll just miraculously understand one another, and if it's not it's not worth bothering with. Interestingly, though, it's shortly followed be the revelation that Rowan and Pam have shared some confidences. This has been your regular scheduled fic prompt.

Pam's mentioning Rowan's lack of a social life suggests guilt about allowing her to take on the farm, perhaps. But the Marlows seem to have been accepted into the milieu of Westbridge and environs, nonetheless, as the invitations indicate.

The barbecue-cum-midnight steeplechase! I once came close to almost writing fic about it, but fell heavily at the fence of not knowing anything about the curious and hazardous-sounding practice of midnight steeplechasing, which I tried to remedy by buying Moyra Charlton's The Midnight Steeplechase. This has been your regular &c.

In the discussion of alternative Christmas Day activities, Ann seems again to be cast as killjoy; though it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to imagine that Mrs Marlow might be disconcerted if she rings an empty house on Christmas Day (minor but telling revelation that Giles doesn't phone to wish his family a merry Christmas, because apparently, it would mean too much. Ugh, Giles.) And apparently the plan before the picnic idea is mooted was to haul Mrs Bertie in to cook Christmas dinner in the evening, which doesn't seem very bloody noblesse oblige to me. Rowan's rationale for getting Giles to talk Mrs Bertie round touches again on the theme of gender roles.

Giles's encounter with Karen, Edwin and the family: this has been your regular &c.

I think that opening presents on Christmas Eve is positively odd, but then other people's Christmas traditions always are. The mention of Ginty's presents is a foreshadow of her birthday.

Nick and Lawrie's party dresses! (It seems that Mrs Marlow relented from her irritation at the Changear episode and the coughing bear might have been uncontroversial after all. Different people's taboos about second-hand clothing always interest me: 'new second-hand' from strangers was read by Mrs Marlow as 'desperation', but Nick and Lawrie have been wearing fifth-hand clothes all their lives! I had a university tutor who was happy to buy second-hand jackets, shirts and pullovers but recoiled at the thought of second-hand trousers). The dresses are hard to visualise, but I like the notion that they're so completely different.

Giles' bafflement at Doris and the Chest ('positively pelican'--moderately recondite reference for the target market?) amuses me: actually, though I suspect his main function in these chapters is as exposition catch-up device, I wonder if a case could be made for his discombobulation at having missed two action-packed years of family life going some way to explain his peculiar lapses of judgement later on? He does, we learn, have the occasional twinge of guilt at letting Rowan take on the farm, which expresses itself in trying to do Rowan's chores for her; she in turn is irritated by what she perceives (probably rightly) as some pretty have-your-cake-and-eat-it sexism.

The little reminder of Eddi's Service in Nicola daring Rowan to check if the cattle are kneeling is charming.

Any thoughts on Ann choosing to remain behind?

I quite enjoy the lost in the fog bit. Peter, still with the Mummerzet? My acquaintance from without Britain and Ireland remark with exasperation on precisely the aspect of our signposting that Forest notes, and also on the quaint silliness of English village names, which is gently and effectively sent up here (it's easy to slip into broad parody with Magnas, Parvas and so on, but Forest stays just on the right side, I think).

Lawrie again seems excessively whingey here, though her qualms do a good job of suggesting that madcap spontaneity can just fall awfully flat. Still, a suitable spot is found, and Peter displays his talent for sloping off 'exploring' when there's work to be done.

Could Giles actually be more ghastly than in this after-dinner conversation? UGH, GILES. Rowan's plans to be more proactive come Lady Day seems a good point to mention this fabulous fic by

nnozomi. I'm mildly surprised that Rowan's indulgent of the sexist division of labour.

Surfrider is introduced, and I like Nicola's 'sun on the sea when there's no sun', which has a 'from the life' feeling about it.

I'll leave discussion of the Oeschlis' story mostly to the comments. Though all parties have behaved badly, Felix seems to get off very lightly from both the Marlows and their author for kidnapping a baby and communicating with his mother no more often than annually.

Rowan's acerbic 'Do you a power of good to hear the havoc you can cause' brings Peter as teenage father unsettlingly to mind. This has been your regular scheduled &c.

Giles's omelette-making skills again touch the theme of gendered domesticity: the story of the omelette challenge in the dubious bistro is surely worth a short fic?

The notion of getting Edward back to his father is raised at first as desultory hypothetical half-fantasy, and the different range of reactions from the siblings is interesting in terms of characterisation: Nicola's outrage, I can't help feeling, stems (slightly obscurely) from being closest of all the family to Chas and Rose, also children who've been scarred by parental manoeuvrings, though nothing on the Oeschli level. Peter seems to take it least seriously, though it's Giles who makes the most flippant suggestions, and Rowan (at last) raises the possibility of 'real life' trouble if copped. Ann seems just to have a blind faith in authority, which doesn't quite fit with my conception of her character.

The conclusion of the chapter does a great job of suggesting the scratchy tension between all the siblings (Giles and Rowan perhaps excepted: I'm interested in their relationship--fic?). Not a very happy Christmas Day.

A short chapter, but an evocative one. I love 'Provokiev': a bit of a gamble on Kay's part, as a present for a nine year old boy, even a railway nutter, I think, but Chas seems to like it. Chas and Rose having a 'hide-place' seems more significant than just the typical need and liking of children their age for private dens: there is a sense of a kinship of hurt and troubled children in how they relate to Edward too, uncommunicative as the latter is. I'm glad Chas has found a schoolfriend in Barry, though. It's a very Forestian touch, I think, that the plot is set in motion here by imaginative action: a fateful coalescence of a TV drama, the TV news and Chas's own need for escape from a far-from-easy family situation.

Well, I think that will do from me for now. Have at it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

The effect of Giles's arrival is to make Run Away Home feel like some kind of 1940s/50s holiday adventure story: big brother-led trips to the beach and family confabs. The contrast with Ready Made Family is stark - it feels like going back in time, not forward

Yes! I've been thinking this too. It's not just that he's trying to fit back into family life after two years away - it's that the last time he was onshore it was 1948, and now it's 1978, and he's really not coping very well with the adjustment. (To be fair to him, none of his siblings ever had to make such a huge leap in one go - they've all done it in stages.) But being Giles, he automatically assumes that they're all going to humour him and meet him half-way in 1957, or wherever it is he's managed to get to. And for some odd reason, they're all going along with it.

Another slightly spooky effect: just as Nicola has spent the last two years carrying in her head a picture of Giles in uniform, I suspect that Giles has been carrying an entire set of partial, stereotypical, three-decades-old images of his siblings. But such is the power of Giles, when Giles's perceptions of his siblings meet reality, the images win : Ann becomes a cardboard cut-out, Rowan stops being a sensible adult and becomes appropriately deferential, Nicola forgets everything she's learned in Cricket Term and Attic Term and reverts to a hero-worshipping, impulsive twelve-year-old. Peter doesn't change so much (a little more resentful and insubordinate, perhaps?) but maybe that's because Giles had a more accurate picture of him to start with. Only Lawrie seems unaffected - is that because Giles can't really get a handle on her, and doesn't try?

Here's the question: does Giles have these super-powers over the other characters, or does he have them over AF herself?

(Timeline whimsy aside, what I mean is: is AF just accurately depicting the way that people regress when in the company of family they haven't seen for a while, and in the case of older/more authoritative family members, find themselves fulfilling their worst expectations? Or, by writing Giles as a character for the first time since 1948, is she unconsciously revisiting earlier/less well-developed versions of her other characters - and perhaps also views on gender, etc from 30 years previously?)

From: (Anonymous)

That was me, sorry - jss

From:

lilliburlero.livejournal.com

I confess I like the idea of Giles as supervillain with a death-ray engine that makes all narrative and characterisation less sophisticated (the BlytonoScope?) But I think Forest means to show that Giles's presence has thrown everyone a bit, in the way that adults sometimes find themselves reprising their teenage selves when staying with their parents. I think Rowan has a particularly hard time of it: she's fond of Giles and seems of all the siblings closest to him, but his sexism and 'helpful interest' in the farm must be enormously irritating. And I think the oddity of the gender politics of the novel might very well, in some deflected way, have something to do with Forest writing Giles 'on-screen' for the first time in 30 years. Not so sure I'd say she's reverting to earlier versions, though--the Ann of Autumn Term seems a more rounded and sophisticated creature than the one of Run Away Home fr ex.

From:

jackmerlin.livejournal.com

I love this analysis! All so true!

From:

antfan.livejournal.com

is AF just accurately depicting the way that people regress when in the company of family they haven't seen for a while, and in the case of older/more authoritative family members, find themselves fulfilling their worst expectations? Or, by writing Giles as a character for the first time since 1948, is she unconsciously revisiting earlier/less well-developed versions of her other characters - and perhaps also views on gender, etc from 30 years previously?

Your whole analysis is really fascinating. And of course, you are right that people often regress with relatives they haven't seen for a bit - the only thing is, i think they usually resent it/are aware that they are regressing, which none of the Marlows seem to do. Which makes me think it's not just Forest deciding to portray what happens when a relative returns after a gap, it's more to do, as you say with something the Return of Giles sparks off in her own psychology. Maybe.

Certainly when I read Run Away Home a couple of years back, I had the weirdest feeling the Marlows had all returned to how they were in Falconer's Lure - it was so similar in feel, it was almost as if the books in between never happened. And I do think one thing both books have in common is a Strong Male Authority Figure throwing his weight around - Geoff and Giles. And they both do idiot things - letting Rowan chuck up her education, and abducting Edward - but none of the rest of the family put up any opposition, just go along with it, whereas other authority figures - Miss Keith say - get treated with huge scepticism on everything. (Contrast Rowan's attitude to Miss Keith with her attitude to Daddy and Big Bruv!)

So it might be, as you say, Giles has triggered these things unconsciously in AF, resulting in a subconscious return to the 1940s. Or, I also wonder, if AF is perhaps harking back as she gets older. All the biographical material we have on her (just the Marlows and their Maker and Celebrating Antonia Forest in my case) is very clear that she's very hostile to modern life, and really pretty reactionary on all fronts at least towards the end of her life, and though that's always there to some extent in her work, I also find it hard to reconcile with the writer who is so subversive writing about Kingscote, so interested to explore family tensions in RMF or to really engage at a deep level with a character like Jukie and his motivations and invent a whole new way of speech for his gang. Not to mention Mask of ApolIo. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe her hostility to the world around her was growing as she grew older, and so in RAH perhaps she was tempted, finally, to succumb to a bit of retro nostalgia (and the whole decaying rural life/country mansion thing discussed in the next few chapters of the read though perhaps ties in with that.)

Though she doesn't entirely abandon her contemporary timeline approach either, so we get all the TV shows, the Judith unmarried pregnancy tale, Lawrie dressing as punk etc etc too. And the more overt discussions of gender roles - with the female Marlows actually seeming to question the accepted braves/squaws conventions - yet within a book where ironically male leadership seems much more taken for granted than in most of her other books.

From:

lilliburlero.livejournal.com

I don't want this to be true, but I'm afraid the Giles of RAH bears all the terrible marks of a character whom his author likes--has a bit of a crush on, even--so immoderately that she has not gone to the trouble of actually making him in any way likeable to readers. And his return feels like a sort of self-indulgence: Forest lets herself go in other sorts of fogeydom as well.

From:

antfan.livejournal.com

And contrast Edwin - in RMF he arrives as the kind of anti-Giles - middle-aged and not remotely dashing - the Marlows all take against him at first glance, and Forest goes to some trouble to show there is more to him and his situation than superficial appearances. But in RAH Giles swaggers in, is allowed to take over, and Edwin is condemned by Giles while Nicola's continued defence of Edwin is almost just portrayed as her little quirk. And why? Maybe because in RMF Forest was going to some trouble to understand a character whose values, background, allegiances were not immediately sympathetic to her...but in RAH she's only interested in naval officers and landed gentry. Maybe.

(Some of this is based on the cutting room floor bits of RAH I admit, where I think Edwin really is very harshly portrayed.)