trennels | Falconer’s Lure: Dated, Difficult or Plain Dreadful?

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Falconer’s Lure: Dated, Difficult or Plain Dreadful?

This kind of follows along from the last discussion, but I thought I would give it a new thread. It’s basically that I just can’t get along with Falconer’s Lure. I fell joyfully on my GGB copy, having not read it for decades, only to find it a crushing disappointment. (And Marlows and the Traitor, too, sad to say.)

It feels so dated. The characters seem much less complex than in later books (for the first time I understand why people find Nicola annoying) and the style doesn’t seem so assured. It’s a much more conventional family story than the other holiday books: dad makes the decisions – nobody really questions his authority – mum is gently supportive - the only character who really steps out of line (Ginty) is shown the error of her ways.

In terms of her writing craft, AF doesn’t seem to handle her material well: a key theme is Jon’s death and the family’s reactions, yet we hardly get to know Jon; all the Unity Logan discussion seems a bit pointless when we never encounter her (and I just can’t imagine the adults being that interested in a totally unknown adolescent); in the scene in the attic, there are no less than three big chunks of poetry read/sung aloud to intense reactions from the audience – over-egging it surely? (And so many blooming competitions: diving, sailing, swimming, reciting, singing, gymkhana…) Its structure is a bit of a mess, and usually that is something AF does so well.

Above all, there are no really magnificent, memorable passages, like, say, the hunt in Peter’s Room. (Here I don’t think AF did herself a favour picking falconry. “It was quite impossible to make them understand why the flight at gull had been so thrilling” – quite. )

So I’m wondering:

i) Is Falconer’s Lure irredeemably “dated”?

ii) Or do AF’s books simply need to be read several times? Will I eventually come to appreciate FL?

iii) Or does AF’s writing simply get better as she grows into her style/gets to know her characters? Are the middle books just better than the earlier ones?

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It's not one of her best, but I quite liked it (it was the last one I read having read all the school ones aged 12 or so and found the others on Ebay as an adult).

Now you mention it, it's more like the formulaic school-type novels (Chalet School, Abbey School) where the big competition is used as a major plot device. I'd guess this is down to AF writing it quickly for money (plot: moving house, competition finale, dealing with grief and Ginty being annoying, has falcons instead of ponies/dogs).

I tend to enjoy the character interaction most, especially how they interact with rules imposed by home/school. Quite liked the falconry geeking (all new to me), but the hunt in PR I found boring. But then I don't like action sequences - in fights in books and films I flip to the end and see who's still standing after.

As for not getting to know Jon or Unity, I figured that was part of the point - Jon's gone and affects them a lot more in death than alive; it doesn't matter what Unity is really like - what matters is what the Marlows think of her.

As for not getting to know Jon or Unity, I figured that was part of the point - Jon's gone and affects them a lot more in death than alive; it doesn't matter what Unity is really like - what matters is what the Marlows think of her.

Yes exactly -- and what girlyswot says below, as well, that it's uncomfortable but true that Jael's death affects Nicola so much more than Jon's (and we've just had the counter-example of Mrs M's grief for Jon being aroused by Nicola's song, so the comparison is quite deliberate). There is also that bit later -- I don't remember whether it's FL or a later book -- when Nicola and Patrick are talking and Nicola suddenly realizes that Patrick really *knew* Jon -- that they were friends, and Patrick, in contrast to the younger Marlows, really misses Jon as a person rather than just being sad in a general way that he's not there as a comfortable if largely theoretical fixture in their lives. I think all of that is handled brilliantly, and FL is one of my most favourite and most-reread Forests.

i) I don't think it is dated; especially it is not dated as much as the later books
ii) I do think they need to be read several times because she does squash so much in - they are dense little novels. Having said that, I've only read FL once and I love it :)
iii) I am of the opinion that the earlier books, when she was freshly revolutionary (!) are better than the middle books, when she sort of meandered through different genres and themes.

I wrote about FL on my bookblog here: http://ninedresses.livejournal.com/2301.html if you would like to read it. I must say I think it is my favourite AF (I think. This changes lol).

Doesn't she meander through genres pretty much from the start? School story - then espionage adventure - then outdoors holidays book... I don't mind that aspect of her writing. But Falconers Lure doesn't really strike me as "freshly revolutionary" - Autumn Term, yes, clearly subverting the school story genre - but I don't see much revolutionary about FL.

I enjoyed reading your review - thank you. I think Patrick and Nicola's friendship - at the start - is very much in the Jo March/Lawrie - boy-next-door mode, where a long friendship seen as perfectly OK and unremarkable. After all, Nicola is 13 in FL, and probably hasn't hit puberty yet (there is never any hint of breasts, periods etc for the twins, although there is for Ginty in Cricket Term). Age of first period has fallen significantly since 1948 after all. It is though, odd as you say that none of the siblings/parents ever have very much to say about the Nicola-Patrick-Ginty situation, even when the romantic overtones do enter in....

At the start I think she throws herself into the different genres and relishes them; towards the end she just falls into her second-best ideas, if that makes sense. It was the 'meandering' bit of my sentence I should have emphasised.

I do see a lot of revolutionary action in FL - both the inclusion of at all, and her depiction of, bloodsport; the idea of possible romance at the age of 13/15 is unusual to see in British GO; the permissibility of Rowan leaving school at 17 to take on a traditionally male career. It's all exciting :)

I definitely take your point with, say Run Away Home - that definitely seems a case of a "second-best" rather arbitrary idea being tacked on to make a story. But I think Ready Made Family and Cricket Term are two of the very best. And Marie Dobson's death is so well done - all the reactions so in character, and the general social embarrasment of it all. Nicola thinks Marie doesn't seem enough of a person to die - but actually, from the earlier books we know Marie well. Whereas Jon we hardly know, and what we do know is not very distinctive - just another Geoff Marlow/Giles Marlow identikit.

I like Falconer's Lure. I agree that it's not as tightly plotted as most (though I think, given that The Marlows and the Traitor comes before this, it's hard to argue that's an issue of AF's development as a writer). But I love all the individual elements. It's a book that allows the characters to take precedence over the plot, I think. At the end of FL, we know Nicola, Lawrie, Ginty, Peter, Patrick and Rowan (at least) much, much better than we did at the start. We learn how they grieve, what they value, how they respond under pressure, who's competitive and who's self-aware.

In particular, I never fail to be moved by the scene in the singing comp. when Nicola forgets her words. That Jael's death should affect her so much more strongly and personally than Jon's strikes me as an incredibly uncomfortable reality. I like the developing friendship with Patrick and all the undercurrents of envy with Peter. There are a lot of well-drawn scenes and, if the whole makes more of a patchwork than a portrait, that's okay with me.

Oh, interesting! I don't agree at all, I think Falconer's Lure is a really good Forest.

For me, there are many memorable passages. For example, 'Grand Stoop' when Nicola and Patrick are out on the Downs with The Sprog, and see Jon's plane, and don't realise they've seen it fall. I could almost quote from memory but have looked it up for accuracy:
'And then, as she stood up, it felt as if she had walked into a wall. For a moment, the landscape seemed to quiver. And then it was still again and she could move.'

And at the end of the same chapter:
'Nicola, sauntering back to Trennels beside the slow stream and the dancing midges, met Peter at the plank bridge which crossed the stream just below the pool. He looked, she thought, rather odd. And he sounded odd, asking if Patrick had been stopped in time or was he anywhere around. The sun came down in slanting lines through the trees, and made a fishnet of light on the bed of the stream. It was doing that when Nicola and Peter first met. It was still doing so, five minutes later. But by then Peter had managed to tell her that Cousin Jon had been killed when the plane crashed, and that made everything look quite different.'

'Jael in the Evening' is another wonderful chapter (though poor Peter).

I rather like Captain Marlow in FL, especially when he's obviously grieving for Jon, and adjusting to owning Trennels, which humanises him a bit from the very brisk father of Autumn Term. And I love that he quells Lawrie with the Jabberwock. And for me Jon's death is handled very well, and the way it affects them all differently, and that Patrick is probably worst hit of all. Mrs Marlow and then Nicola being ambushed by different griefs over 'Fear no more the heat of the sun' is also beautifully done, I think.

And there are lovely little scenes - I like Nicola and Patrick feeling 'so mediaeval/Navy they could bust', and the haircuts, and Peter teaching Lawrie to dive. Structurally it is quite episodic, though in fact I think Forest often is, with themes echoing through the episodes rather than a complex plot.

Could you be more specific about why you find Nicola irritating? The one I find slightly out of character at one point in FL is Rowan, when she forces Ginty to enter for the festival. It would seem more Rowan-like, to me, to let Ginty alone.

On datedness, I think Thuggery Affair, with the invented language for Jukie & his gang, is probably the most so to my taste. I agree that FL does feel very much of the immediate post-war period, because of the references to the war and evacuation and Jon's service, apart from anything else, but somehow it's not 'dated' for me.

I'd be interested to hear more about your reaction to MATT too; I think that in Foley at least Forest has drawn one of her most interesting characters.

Hmm, you've almost convinced me I did enjoy it after all!

I know the later books so well that maybe there is an element of being annoyed at being confronted with the same characters in a version I'm not used to. I kept comparing certain incidents unfavourably with similar incidents in other books - eg the death of Jael, with the death of Sprog (which is such a wonderful bit of writing), the hawking scenes with the hunt in Peter's Room etc. Maybe it was because I didn't come to it fresh.

Still, to try and give a concrete example of what I don't like. Ginty, in Falconer's Lure, is the archetypal self-indulgent sulky girl who needs to be shown the error of her ways - and is. The reasons for her behaviour - mainly what happened in MATT - is all set out very pat, and then after various events she is made to snap out of it. I actually think AF really intends to turn her into a "good egg" at this point - because there is also that reference in End of Term, about the colours shining more truly in a transfer? - do you remember - which makes it sound as if Ginty is all sorted and a reformed character. But in the later books, I would say from Peter's Room on, Ginty is treated differently - she is the way she is, charming and superficial and too easily able to please - and the moral ramifications of this are played out in quite a subtle way, through the choices that she makes and her interactions with other characters. Nicola compares her in Cricket Term to a chameleon, a really defining image - and there is that telling scene in the same book where Ginty decides to attribute her failure to win the Diving Cup to her friendship for Monica - thus taking the easy way out, as she always will. (Ginty has allowed Monica, earlier, to make a real sacrifice, but she repays it with a betrayal.) In the middle/later books, I think AF creates in Ginty (and Lawrie too actually) fascinating monsters, studies in a certain kind of egotism and blindness. They are the way they are. That's how life is. Because they are beautiful/talented they get away with it to an extent - but there is a cost. But in Falconer's Lure we seem much more back to a different kind of mode in which bad characters are made to shape up and see the errors of their ways.

The scene with the gymkhana at the end - where Wendy Reynolds is out to put Nicola down - and various characters conspire to put her in her place instead - again it seems the very morally black and white, rather cliched type of episode you might get in other children's books of the period. It just isn't the AF I know and love.

And then there's Nicola - I'll have to get back to you on that one...

Just picking up briefly on Ginty, I've always read her as a chameleon in Falconer's Lure as well as the other books, and her transformation into a pony-lover at the end of FL as as much of a response to her surroundings as her Unity Logan friendship. I think Nicola's mental comment that Ginty 'in this congenial atmosphere was rapidly... showing every sign of developing into the very worst kind of Pony Club type' is very accurate about Ginty's tendencies. And though of course Unity Logan is a disaster and Ginty should stop being friends with her, I'm not sure her giggling about Unity doing a 'terrific thing' about the end of their friendship suggests she's become a wholly good egg.

One could see the whole thing over the Festival as reinforcing her in her changefulness; better to fit in wherever you are and enjoy yourself than stick to something you've (claimed) to believe in. She converts to bloodsports ridiculously quickly ('Mummy was talking about hunting this winter. So would I like to').

I've always read the bit about her changing when playing Gabriel as part of the same thing (it's a lovely line, isn't it, the one about the colours of the transfer?), though I can see it can be read to suggest that she's really changed.

The Ginty stuff puts me off Falconer's Lure as well. I can see her behaviour is tiresome, but then I don't like Rowan's towards her, either. The whole thing's all too "Brace up, you silly girl!"; that MATT might have an effect is a great possibility, but it all feels a bit too stock, and there's a faint tendency of the Marlows to turn on their own for not living up to what's required that makes me uncomfortable. I like that as a loving family they are not idealised, but those bits of them that get authorial approval are not necessarily the bits that would get my approval. In fact, I think a lot of AF sometimes makes me uncomfortable and I like the books despite that! I'm certianly far from sure that we would get on in if we met.

I admit, I'm one of the not-keen-on-Nicola people, but I don't find her particularly annoying in this book.

I do agree that Rowan behaves badly towards Ginty in FL - there's a bit near the end where Mrs Marlow says 'Another time, if someone wants you to do something you don't want to do, say so.' and I always think 'But she did say so!'

You've put this very well about Ginty, I think this is what I was trying to put my finger on: the sense of a rather authoritarian moral code being imposed. I think I detect it in some books but not others - when I do it puts me off.

sorry, should make clear previous post refers to Nineveh. Yes I think our response to Ginty is much the same.

Coughing Bear, you read it completely differently from me, and yet your reading makes perfect sense! I read Ginty's oh-so-rapid conversion to ponies and bloodsports as demonstrating that her earlier principles were very much skin deep - but not that you're supposed to take it that her new interests/outlook is equally superficial. Hmm. I do think that tranfer bit - yes lovely quote - in End of Term - fits better with my reading than yours though. After all if the colours are showing "true" then that suggests that it is the essential Ginty we are seeing, not just one more manifestation...

I think actually the characters aren't completely consistent in Forest, and this makes them oddly enough more interesting and life-like, quite often. For example, I like the way Ann comes out with sudden insights in Cricket Term, or is capable of playing an inspiring Mary in End of Term. The surprisingness of characters you think you know wholly is actually quite true to life in a funny way. But then reading FAlconers Lure and finding them different to what I thought I knew has, I have to admit, bothered me. Another, more minor example, than Ginty: Mrs Marlow, who is so bland and gentle and domestic, not stubbing out cigarettes and suddenly snapping her children's heads off, as she is from time to time in the later books...

By the way, Nineveh, out of curiousity, what are the other bits of AF that make you feel uncomfortable?

OTTOMH I am not quite sure. Not Patrick, who I think it interesting, but find as a reader a thoroughly dislikeable character even as I can see why he is personable in Real Life (as it were). Not Miranda, who can be magnificently scornful, but is in some sense at least predictable - one would know where one was with her. It's something about judgement of characters/people, by the character in the books, and by AF. I know that I have judgemental tendencies myself, so perhaps it's a bit close to the bone in some sense, though I didn't go to Kingscote or come from an upper middle class family, so I may be more reticent in making my judgements known! I just find something jarring in the way that AF and I can suddenly seem very far apart, though I don't need to agree with an author to enjoy a book. I don't know.

I think, perhaps, at root may be a discomfort with the portrayal of the complex family dynamic, which though a big part of what makes the books terrific is something I find challenging. I can't help comparing it to my own (smaller!) family and thinking "But Mum would never let me behave to [younger sisters] like that." The openness with which, say, Ginty or Ann is despised at times, and the way that this attitude seems to have authrial approval, is something I find difficult. The fact that my favourite character is Lawrie may reflect a general feeling I have that this is a bunch of people whose good opinion might be nice to have, but whose bad opinion I wouldn't credit ;-)

In short, and again, I don't really know. It's complicated...

Strewth, I still find it strange that I'd 'meet' someone who liked Lawrie best!

Lawrie irritates me in some ways with being so demanding and whingey. However, I think both she and Nicola have worked out ways to get what they want, especially as they are at the bottom of the family tree living with the least information (eg in FL when they don't know that their father has inherited Trennels) and the hand-me-down clothes. Lawrie tends to go for the 'It's not fair' and associated litany as her route to getting what she needs/wants.

It's interesting that Lawrie's character - I think - changes from the intial desription in Autumn Term:

~*~*~

Lawrie nodded. Like Nicola she was thin and blue-eyed with straight sun-bleached hair and an expression of alert inquiry. But she talked less than Nicola, and although she was just as interestd, she was inclined to leave it to Nicola to find out and tell her all about it when she had done so.

Pg 12 Puffin Paperback 1977 edition

~*~*~

By the way, just noticed that in the form lists in Autumn Term, when Nick and LAwrie find out they're in Third Remove, M. West is not listed in any form. Wonder why not?

By the way, just noticed that in the form lists in Autumn Term, when Nick and LAwrie find out they're in Third Remove, M. West is not listed in any form. Wonder why not?

I've always assumed that the form lists in question specifically covered the new girls only, the ones who've just taken the exams to decide what form they're in. Miranda's been in Kingscote since the juniors so she'd know what form she'd be in at the end of the previous term.

Hazel, Jean, Audrey, and Marie Dobson aren't listed in the Third Remove list, but they're all in the form.

On datedness, I think Thuggery Affair, with the invented language for Jukie & his gang, is probably the most so to my taste.

It is, of course, very dated - but I, a child of the 1960s, found it did resonate, just a bit.....

hear here.

FL is prob my favourite AF book of all. The bit where Nicola stops singing is so awfully sad.

Also I agree about the Thuggery. The slang dates it horribly.

But I never have problems with Thuggery Affair at all! I can see its dated but it doesn't feel dated to me. I don't know whether its because I grew up with Thuggery Affair so to speak - I'm coming to FL fresh - or whether its closer to my own childhood (1970s) and just feels less alien than the 1940s.

FL was always one of my favourite Forests, possibly because it was the first of the holiday books I read. (I was able to buy Peter's Room, Ready-Made Family, Thuggery in Faber paperback later, and Run Away Home wasn't published then). Then the library lost its copy of FL, which I'd been borrowing every 6 months or so, and I couldn't read it for 15 years or so.

I think it's the busiest of the stories, with more plots than most. Jon's death & move to the country; Patrick and Peter; Nicola, Patrick and hawks; Ginty; Lawrie and acting; Rowan and school/farm. Far more plots and character development than Traitor, for example. Maybe that was the idea - she'd done a tightly constructed one-location plot with few characters; for a change, time to spread out and cover everybody and everywhere.

You're probably right that the characters aren't so complex as in the later books, though I'm not sure I'd agree with you re. Lawrie, who I think was born fully formed. But there's a huge amount of detail with the relationship between the characters, and who's friends with who - we have a pretty full picture by the end of this book on the family relationships. (And as far as Nicola/Patrick, I don't think there's any romance involved until Run Away Home, and even then it's only from Patrick's side, though I'd say Nicola might be just about ready. As someone pointed out in a different thread, Lawrie was able to fit fairly comfortably into an 11-year-old boy's monkey costume, so the twins can't be all that physically advanced.)

I always used to put FL automatically into the top 3 of my favourite AF books, but not any more. If I listed a top 6, probably. But then if I listed a top 10, I still wouldn't know which 3 to leave out (Thursday Kidnapping certainly, Thuggery probably, but all the other 11 are certs for the top 10, if you see what I mean) - the consistent quality of the writing is remarkable.

I certainly never considered it dated, except in the literal sense of being set in 1948. Reading it several times might help. Or maybe you're just more "in tune" with the later books - better for you, perhaps, just a matter of taste?

Colne_dsr (forgot my password so can't log in!)

...I spent twelve years flying hawks because of that book. It might be less than perfect, I suppose, but it was too pivotal for me be able to believe that.

To conclude, I'm going to give FAlconer's Lure another go. If you all like it so much, it must be worth trying again - and if I still don't like it, maybe I will be able to put my finger on exactly why! Thanks for all ther responses.

I think that AF may have been influenced by John Buchan's The Island of Sheep, in which one of the characters keeps hawks, including a goshawk called Jezebel (similar OT name to Jael?).

See quotation below:

If you want to live with death, Archie, keep hawks. They perish at the slightest provocation. Hang themselves, or have apoplexy, or a clot or something, or they get lost and catch their jesses in a tree and die of starvation. I'm always being heartbroken by Peter John coming in with a sad face in the morning to tell me that another bird is dead.

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Falconer’s Lure: Dated, Difficult or Plain Dreadful?

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Falconry in FL