trennels | Bits and pieces from a reread (Reply)

So I have been doing my annual Marlows reread, and coming up with a few things that I either never noticed before or have forgotten I noticed, and thought I would make a self-indulgent post here. Please forgive me if most or all of these are things I already mentioned during the big community reread.

(Nothing in particular for Autumn Term, for some reason)

The Marlows and the Traitor—this really is a book-length meditation on fear and how people handle it (or don’t), isn’t it. All kinds and forms of fear from Peter’s nerves to his and Ginty’s relative phobias, Nicola being made afraid of Foley by Anquetil’s obscure description, Ginty panicking when Foley comes to Mariners, Lawrie (often the odd one out in this way) relatively free of fear because she feels that she’s living in a movie, Mrs. Marlow “almost” as afraid for her children as she was when she thought her husband might have been dead, even Foley himself choosing death over trial for treason. You could probably make a reasonably convincing case that almost all bad choices and bad behavior in Forest stem from fear of one kind or another.

Falconer’s Lure—like poor Ann for Nicola, this one generally comes last on my liking list (End of Term and The Cricket Term generally jostle for first place), but it has some very intelligent conversation, doesn’t it. Rowan and Nicola on their fateful visit to Colebridge (although Lawrie’s hair-cutting episode is one of the few in Forest that could be transplanted intact to Elinor M. Brent-Dyer without seeming out of place), Nicola and her father…again, forgive me if I’ve posted this before, but do we know if Forest ever read I Capture the Castle? Geoff Marlow saying he used to look at Trennels and “want it so much I could hardly look at Jon when we met again” always reminds me irresistibly of Simon Cotton remembering looking out at his relatives at age seven and thinking “If they were all dead, Scoatney would belong to me.” Oh, and I love Peter and Selby arguing over the Dark Tower and Lieutenant Bethune eavesdropping.

End of Term, currently halfway through—no wonder I’m generally pro-Patrick, this was the first Forest book I ever read and he really comes off as very likeable, if eccentric (which may be feature/not bug).

I have never been fond of Tim in the first two school books, her capacity for cruelty frightens me, but I noticed for the first time that when Esther is nearly in tears over having to stay in school at half-term, Tim is the first one to speak up to comfort her; she’s not devoid of concern for others.

To be continued as the mood takes me…