trennels | (no subject)

In her review of the Girls Gone By Thuggery Affair in the latest Folly Sue Sims suggests that TTA is the least popular book of the Marlow canon because it is the most dated, and includes references to Cilla Black and Cliff Richard, together with the Thuggery brand of idiosyncratic teenspeak. Now, I am actually rather fond of The Thuggery Affair - I love Lawrie and her outrageously unMarlow behaviour in the cinema, I like Peter more here than elsewhere and I always enjoy Patrick and Jukie's drive through the night. When I first read it I think my way of dealing with the slang was to approach it like A Clockwork Orange - I had got to the end of the book and worked out translations for Alex and his droogs before I found the glossary.

Practically everything Girlsownish that I read was written either before I was born or when I was very young and is therefore dated in some way. I was wondering if the reason people are bothered by the datedness of TTA is because it is comparatively recent - does this make it less acceptable than a school story full of 20s slang, or Georgette Heyer's Regency buckspeak?

Tell me what you think.

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I thought of it in the same way as A Clockwork Orange too. Also, I'd picked up the impression that the slang would be much more incomprehensible than it turned out to be. I really enjoyed The Thuggery Affair: Patrick and Jukie's drive is one of my favourite episodes in all of the books.

It's the only Marlow book where working-class people appear as other than "bit parts" or servants: I think Antonia Forest's (ahem) somewhat patronising attitude comes across rather strongly. (The invented slang doesn't intrinsically bother me - I suspect among other reasons Forest used it to get around the problem that writers of children's fiction resolve in various different ways - how to have characters who would be swearing sound convincing without actually having them use words that would get the novel banned from most children's libraries.) Mind you, it's been a while since I read it, and none of the slang comes back to me - whereas I remember phrases in Heyer's Regency dialect without difficulty. Perhaps the problem is that it just wasn't a terribly effective invention?

It's true that it's certainly my least favourite, but I'm not sure that it was the dated-ness of it. Some of it made me laugh ('have a drag' needing to be explained and being such a secret sort of clue, when the meaning is pretty obvious nowadays), but I think more I didn't like it because it didn't have as much of the Marlows in it - especially Nicola and Rowan, but also the rest of the family (bit parts aren't enough). Also, I tend to like books less when they are set over a very shor period of time, like this one and Marlows and the Traitor (another one of my least favourites). There is less time for development, and I guess that's partly what I like. They [i]feel[/i] shorter, even if they aren't actually.

I didn't find the slang all that bothersome - I could mostly work out what I needed. It feels more dated than some of the school girl stories, because there is more recognisable in them - they aren't trying so hard to feel 'modern' and 'trendy', and thus they date rather better. It's like any teenager cringing when they hear an adult trying to use slang - it's invariably wrong, and sounds much more out of place than if they'd just used their own normal words, even if they are more formal.

res (sorry, forgotten my password)

I read it for the first time only about three months ago, and I had been putting off reading it because of all the unfavourable comments I'd heard from friends.

For the first half of the book, I agreed with them, and by the time I was half-way through, I thought I'd worked out why - because the first half of TTA is very much an action book rather than a psychological drama. For me, what makes Forest such a brilliant writer is the way that she creates and handles people, and I just wasn't seeing very much of it. Also, although I do agree with you that this is where we see the best of Peter, I was appalled by Lawrie getting off with the enemy, and found it hard to get over that.

Then it changed. Patrick's ride with Jukie is a completely different book, and in my opinion it's among Forest's best writing, because it's back to people. But I think of it as a book of two halves, more so than anything else I've read.

The language didn't really figure for me. It was rather silly, but not a damn nuisance.

I like it quite a lot - I like seeing more of Lawrie, and Peter as well, come to that. The slang doesn't bother me, because it's from before I was born as well, so I can put it down to not being contemporary rather than just wrong. I quite like the references to Cilla and Cliff as well.

Actually, I agreed with the comment about "grown-ups using slang, and getting it wrong" above; my difficulty with the slang was that it "felt" completely forced as dialogue. I know that it was intended to be stylised, but somehow instead of being stylised it came over as fake. The Patrick/Jukie drive turns into something much better, I think, because the slang starts turning into something much more believable by way of dialogue.

Though I am rather amused by the fact that it never occurs to Patrick that his own neck is somewhat in danger, given that's it's his (highly distinctive, 18th century) dagger that's in the ribs of the murdered corpse, and apparently none of the cops see fit to interview him about this minor point. That was the 50s for you, when MPs sons got some proper respect.

It's not just stylised; without the book in front of me I can't give you chapter and verse but there are occasions where they use 1940s and 1950s slang. No self-respecting teenager would ever be caught using something his father might say.

I agree with much of the above: I like it less because no Nick, Giles and Rowan and too much Lawrie; and because it happens over the space of just a few days.

I also just found the plot too contrived, and there were too many compromises made with the characters' behaviour to make the plot fit. There's the whole weird Lawrie episode, as mentioned above. And I didn't find it convincing that Patrick alone would be able to speak the lingo from overhearing a couple of conversations while sitting in a cafe. I don't see Patrick as the cafe loungeing type at ALL, in fact. And then there's the issue of where were their parents during all this commotion: surely Patrick if not the other two would have had the basic sense to get another adult involved when things started going pear shaped?

I have to say that despite the absence of my favourite characters, I always found this book totally compelling (even when I first read it aged about 13 - which is 20 years ago now!). Of course it has major plotholes (such as not getting Mrs M. to drive them into Colebridge) but no worse than most books. (I mean, I love Harry Potter, but all the books are based on totally unnecesary and contrived plot devices). I LOVED Patrick setting off quoting "I met a man this morning, who did not wish to die..." and I thought Peter's Old Man Kangeroo was as evocative and utterly memorable as other great AF scenes, such as the boxing-day hunt in Peter's Room and the sailing-back-from-France scene. At 13 I found the slang slightly irritating, but this was more than made up for by the "teenage-ness" of the book which I really enjoyed (I was fascinated to find Laurie acting like quite a few of my friends at that time). And rereading it as an adult, I actually enjoyed the slang - it is now SO dated as to have got beyond any cringe-worthiness!

My problem with the slang is that I lived that era and it is WRONG. It is not only wrong in actual vocabulary, it is wrong in how it is used. Teenagers of that date who used arcane vocabulary were invariably diglossal; when they wanted to confuse Authority they used slang, but when they needed to communicate with other people (including, for example, parents, aunts and uncles) they were perfectly capable of producing standard usage. In particular, if in a one-to-one conversation with an outsider, they wouldn't use slang because there would be a risk of the outsider learning the meaning of the slang terms, which was something that had above all to be avoided.

I liked the slang when I first read it as a teenager (I think because around the same time I also read Les Miserable, which has a whole chapter on criminal argot). But the slang drives me a bit crazy now. When I was a teenager, I found the plot quite exciting; as an adult, I am quite horrified at the risks they take. For instance, Lawrie puts herself in real danger of being raped when she goes off with Red Ted; Peter could easily have ended up with a knife between his ribs.

When all three are off doing their separate things, I like the way AF uses the transistor radios and the songs to link the parts of the story together in time. But the phrase "hoof-clopping melancholy of Marching Through Madrid" really sticks in my craw - I don't know the song, but the phrase is too adult and it makes me mentally flinch every time I read it.