Christmas in Marlow-land

[sheep-noises.livejournal.com]

This time o' year always reminds me of

1) The Christmas Play in Wade Minster, from "End of Term" (which I don't have atm as my copy gave up the ghost and fell to pieces >:( ) ;

2) The unconventional Christmas Dinner in a cave, with poor old Ann staying home in case the phone rings :( , from "Run Away Home"; but mostly

3) "Peter's Room". For me, this is the most magical of all those magical books. I must admit I've always skipped the bits in Italics, so I still don't know what fantasy it was that they acted out that Christmas, even though I've read it dozens of times. Don't care, either. The wonderful descriptions of the day-to-day Marlow (and a bit o' Merrick) winter doings are enough to keep me going :)

Comments

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I think it'd be quite an interesting parlour game to try - like putting on a performance of Hamlet, leaving out The Mousetrap altogether and letting the audience form their own views of what the play must have been in order to wind up the Royal party so.

these days, I always skip the slow-building train-wreck at the start of Memory because I know it's there, so I don't have to harrow my feelings by going through it again. But if you haven't gone down into the depths with Miles at least once, it's very difficult to appreciate the scale of his achievement in pulling himself out of them (with a bit of help from his friends).

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Yes, it might. How about Autumn Term without the play, vote at the end for what it was? You could probably get a fairly long way thinking that Tim was making drastic cuts and alterations to The Comedy of Errors, or doing her own take on The Parent Trap.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Actually I read Peter's Room before I read End of Term so I formed an entirely different view about what the climactic row had been about, simply from the breakfast time comments of Mrs Marlow, Rowan and Mrs Orly. For example, I assumed one twin had substituted as the other in a team for the whole term.

[owl]

Oh, I do that with Memory as well. It's just too painful to read as often as I want to read the rest of the book.