trennels | Time and the Marlows

I have now read all the modern-day Marlow books I can lay my hands on, which is all but The Marlows and the Traitor (which I remember quite well from when I was 11 or so) and The Thuggery Affair (which I gather is no great loss).

I love these books and mourn the lack of any more. In fact: sorrow! I will probably read the Player ones on the strength of them. The characters are so well drawn and well understood and not always likeable either, which makes them feel very real (except for Giles whom I dislike for being so arrogant and full of himself--and unkind in Autumn Term; I hope he never marries) and I also like how we see a part of their lives with so much more having happened and about to. We'll never know what happened between Nicola and Esther when she went back to school, or how Judith recovered from Edward running away, or how Kay coped with her family, and after all, RL is untidy like that too.

Does anyone know whether AF had any plans for future books and what would have happened in them?

The one thing I find jarring in the books is the very obvious placement of each in a different time and often decade. Why did AF feel it was necessary? The mention of the war in the earlier ones is part of them and places them, as does Ginty having to go through an operator to phone London, but apart from that a reader could, if allowed to, imagine the books to be set in their own era; country life and boarding school haven't changed much. Kingscote in the 50s wasn't much different to my school decades later. So I find gratuitous references to the Beatles, Up Pompeii, punks, Morecombe and Wise etc not just jarring but unnecessary to the story and Pastede On. If the Marlows were watching TV without the programme being mentioned, I would just keep reading, but mention a specific programme for no reason and I stop in my tracks, disconcerted.

The deliberate insertion of current slang feels odd too, or is it just because it's no longer current? Did people really call clothes 'gear' back in the 70s? OTOH I do love what I assume is specifically Marlow family slang like natch, trimmensely (both of which I used as a kid), and sorrow. Come to think of it though, 'sorrow' can't be a Marlowism because Patrick says it too.

I'm curious about Peter's dreadful nickname of Binks. How do you get that from Peter? Is it a baby name they keep on calling him? I'm totally with him on his objections to it, but the others persist in using it. Is it some sort of common baby name in England that might stick? My mother had a friend called Bunty and I could never understand how she put up with it. [shudders]

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Yes, people did use the word 'gear' for clothes in the 1970s.

The word "Sorrow" for "Sorry" is used in a play called The Ghost Train by Arnold Ridley, so I'm guessing it was common parlance in some circles, but I've never encountered it anywhere else.

I agree about the slang and the references to pop culture. For the most part, they are unnecessary. I can see why she set the Marlow books at the time they were written though - it's a choice series writers have to make: stick with the one time or move with the times. Sara Paretsky (VI Warshawski) and Sue Grafton (Kinsey Milhone/alphabet series) both began their detective series at around the same time, and the former has moved with the times, while the latter has stayed in the 1980s - and the latter one is somehow more irritating (to me, anyway). But yes, AF could have done it without the references to pop culture, which really do date the books more than was ever necessary.

Yes, people did use the word 'gear' for clothes in the 1970s.

Really? All the time, or just about fashionable stuff? Sometimes less is more: had for example the clothes not been described, we would be free to imagine them as something current and appropriate. Black velvet with rosebud sprigs? Just no.

There are problems with Sara Paretsky's V I Warshawski too. Although I'm delighted she now has internet access and a mobile phone, I have great difficulty with Lottie being a doctor at what must now be almost 90.

I suppose it was in relation to fashion, thinking about it - I remember it being used as a term in teenage girls' magazines of the time like Jackie and Pink.

>>>>Black velvet with rosebud sprigs? Just no

I'm fairly sure that some of the Quant and Biba stuff included velvet, and a lot of the Quant and Biba stuff was black and/or floral. I remember Mary Quant Daisy boots - they were transparent, decorated with huge black daisies. I think that was in about 1966, but am not sure.

And Mary Quant stuff was definitely gear! And "gear" was also used as a term of approval, so it was gear in both senses of the word....

>>"gear" was also used as a term of approval

You are right - I'd forgotten that - but you are a bit younger than I, so it was more your world than mine - and isn't your background sort of Merrickish and posher than Marlows? So you are proof positive of the bilingual thing

Arguably..... but all young are bilingual, I think, and use the latest slang. Sheesh, they invent the slang! "Gear", as a term of approval was, I think, Liverpudlian (I associate it with the Beatles), and I don't think I, personally, used it much. But it was a long time ago....

That does indeed sound cool, and I know about the big stylised daisies. I get the impression that the rosebud sprigs on Lawrie's dress were 3D and sewn on. Eep.

I met someone called Biba and she was named after that shop. :-)

That sounds very late 1960s. Even I - getting on a bit and not all that cool - spent hours sewing flower shapes to things - applique, isn't it called?
In about 1970 we all wore velvet chokers, with tiny velvet flowers sewn on.
I rather liked that fashion, but you need a young throat!

Appliqué doesn't sound that bad; I even know someone who does it on her jeans and bags. Because AF said 'rosebud sprigs' IIRC, I was thinking more of the horrible things you might see on particularly hideous bridesmaid dresses. :-P

Oh no! They'd be very stylized and not pretty-pretty!
I've just remembered D L sayers and her huge poppies, which , I suppose, was a sort of foreshadowing.
What I really disliked about the Quant daisies was that they were so huge, and the skirts so short, that people looked so topheavy.
By the time that chokers came in, the flowers were small, of course, but still very stylized.

Time and the Marlows

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