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trennels2010-12-11 04:43 pm
ratfan.livejournal.com) wrote in trennels2010-12-11 04:43 pm
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Ready Made Family review
I promised to write a review of The Ready Made Family, which I read for the first time a few weeks ago. Delays have been caused by the death of one of my pet rats, Cecil, who developed an internal cancer (? hard to be sure) and I had him put down, which put me into mourning.
It felt quite strange to read this book, so long after reading those on either side of it. There are still gaps: I've never read The Marlows and the Traitorand have read Falconer's Lure only once. It was a library book and disappeared from the shelves, whether by way of theft or library sale, I don't know. Run Away Home suffered a similar fate but I managed to borrow that one twice. So that's the extent of my knowledge. I noticed that Family had quite a few references to Peter's Room and The Thuggery Affair (both secondhand grabs for me) and did very neatly link those books with the later school stories, The Cricket Term and End of Term.
This wasn't a cheerful book and I found myself appalled at the behaviour of quite a few of the characters, both adults and teens. Along with the twins and Peter's views of Edwin, his sudden advent didn't make a lot of sense to me, particularly as Karen states that he wasn't sure they should marry and she had to persuade him. His attitude towards the younger Marlows and even his own children seemed very old-fashioned and authoritarian, even given the times. I would have thought that he would have had the sense not to treat a 14-year-old incipient brother-in-law as a child but he doesn't. He won't give his son the birthday treat he wants because other arrangements have been made.
I said there were still gaps, which referred to my understanding of the series, but I also believe there is a huge gap in this book, which are the private scenes between Edwin and Karen about their situation, the children, Karen's siblings and the whole idea of their marrying. They must have had these talks, one assumes, unless Edwin treated his 19-year-old girlfriend as though she was one of her younger sisters. We the readers don't get to read such scenes because the focus character, Nicola, would never get to witness them.
Nicola is the only one to witness the possible "redemption" of Edwin after her search for Rose in Oxford, which was some of the best scenes in the book. Not enough detail or grittiness re the potential molestor, I feel, but I suppose that is natural enough in a book from a time before the concept of YA. Forest would have been writing for children, so these ideas had to be presented to suit 10-year-olds as well as teens. In Edwin, towards the end of the book, we see someone Nicola might get along with. Karen, too, is smart and academic in her interests, so in the Nicola/Edwin interaction we get the only true hints of why Edwin might have chosen Karen, and Karen chosen him.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. I really felt for Rose, wanting to hide away with books, because that is the sort of child I was. My parents divorced when I was seven and I could identify with her quite strongly. If this was modern day, Rose would be seeing a therapist. Chas was the most hopeful; he is a definite survivor. As for Fob, I'm with Nicola, kids that age are aliens and you cannot communicate with them! It's funny, though, reflecting on how fast children and teens do change, that the three years between Rose and Nicola is a huge distance and the eight years between Fob and Nicola is a gulf. Even there, though, there are some flashbacks to my own extreme youth and the hero-worship I remember feeling for the older brother of some of my brother's friends, who like Peter was 14 and seemed almost grown up, yet approachable in a way that adults weren't.
I'm not sure if this will ever be a favourite, probably somewhere between Thuggery which I seriously didn't like and the school stories. After I finished it I did a quick reread of Cricket Term which had miraculously become clearer, especially in its beginnings before the twins return to school. So overall, I'm quite glad it's here in my library now.
It felt quite strange to read this book, so long after reading those on either side of it. There are still gaps: I've never read The Marlows and the Traitorand have read Falconer's Lure only once. It was a library book and disappeared from the shelves, whether by way of theft or library sale, I don't know. Run Away Home suffered a similar fate but I managed to borrow that one twice. So that's the extent of my knowledge. I noticed that Family had quite a few references to Peter's Room and The Thuggery Affair (both secondhand grabs for me) and did very neatly link those books with the later school stories, The Cricket Term and End of Term.
This wasn't a cheerful book and I found myself appalled at the behaviour of quite a few of the characters, both adults and teens. Along with the twins and Peter's views of Edwin, his sudden advent didn't make a lot of sense to me, particularly as Karen states that he wasn't sure they should marry and she had to persuade him. His attitude towards the younger Marlows and even his own children seemed very old-fashioned and authoritarian, even given the times. I would have thought that he would have had the sense not to treat a 14-year-old incipient brother-in-law as a child but he doesn't. He won't give his son the birthday treat he wants because other arrangements have been made.
I said there were still gaps, which referred to my understanding of the series, but I also believe there is a huge gap in this book, which are the private scenes between Edwin and Karen about their situation, the children, Karen's siblings and the whole idea of their marrying. They must have had these talks, one assumes, unless Edwin treated his 19-year-old girlfriend as though she was one of her younger sisters. We the readers don't get to read such scenes because the focus character, Nicola, would never get to witness them.
Nicola is the only one to witness the possible "redemption" of Edwin after her search for Rose in Oxford, which was some of the best scenes in the book. Not enough detail or grittiness re the potential molestor, I feel, but I suppose that is natural enough in a book from a time before the concept of YA. Forest would have been writing for children, so these ideas had to be presented to suit 10-year-olds as well as teens. In Edwin, towards the end of the book, we see someone Nicola might get along with. Karen, too, is smart and academic in her interests, so in the Nicola/Edwin interaction we get the only true hints of why Edwin might have chosen Karen, and Karen chosen him.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. I really felt for Rose, wanting to hide away with books, because that is the sort of child I was. My parents divorced when I was seven and I could identify with her quite strongly. If this was modern day, Rose would be seeing a therapist. Chas was the most hopeful; he is a definite survivor. As for Fob, I'm with Nicola, kids that age are aliens and you cannot communicate with them! It's funny, though, reflecting on how fast children and teens do change, that the three years between Rose and Nicola is a huge distance and the eight years between Fob and Nicola is a gulf. Even there, though, there are some flashbacks to my own extreme youth and the hero-worship I remember feeling for the older brother of some of my brother's friends, who like Peter was 14 and seemed almost grown up, yet approachable in a way that adults weren't.
I'm not sure if this will ever be a favourite, probably somewhere between Thuggery which I seriously didn't like and the school stories. After I finished it I did a quick reread of Cricket Term which had miraculously become clearer, especially in its beginnings before the twins return to school. So overall, I'm quite glad it's here in my library now.
no subject
You're right of course that this structure means that we're left to fill in an awful lot of the gaps, but I think this works particularly well in this book because if the book has a theme then it is one of absence and how you deal with it: the dead mother, the empty houses, the absent father, the moribund farm manager, Karen's lost student life, the book even begins in a odd 'space' between term and holidays (I think there's been illness at school?) and the tone is set by Nicola's opening struggle with 'Persuasion', that saddest of the JA novels.
It is very daring I think to have written a character as unlikeable as Edwin and to allow us - via Nicola - to understand as the book goes on that he is caught up in grief and guilt - for his failed marriage, for his dead wife, for his children. And that Karen is inescapably the casualty of that. You're right that we see glimpses of a likable, focused Edwin when he talks to Nicola about history and I think this is also such a sophisticated point - when you realise that people have different angles and personae to them, that they are different people in different contexts, and here is a man - in his forties presumably - removed entirely from his professional sphere and forced to be grateful to a new (and disapproving) family at a time of great personal pain and confusion. I assume there is a class point here too: the Marlow property and background make Edwin insecure and defensive and make his professional standing that he has worked for seem insignificant and irrelevant.
As you say, we simply see nothing of the 'student Katie', of the dynamic of attraction, hero-worship, intellectual excitement and vulnerability that must have created the relationship.
And then to allow Edwin's character to show us unlikeable things about almost *all* of the rest of the family: Peter, Rowan, Ginty and Karen all come off badly at various points, but in ways that ring true to their characters in the strain of that situation, and we see Nicola understanding more about the strengths and weaknesses of *all* her family, even those she had most admired (like Rowan). And of course they all learn more too about their own parents' marriage - just at this moment when all of them (even Ginty perhaps) are realising that even the very beginnings of a relationship can be fraught with compromise and earlier sadnesses. When Nicola's mother talks about running off with their father, and her parents' horror, I always think of that moment in 'Autumn Term' when she reveals quite casually that all four of her brothers died in the first world war.
I know lots of people do prefer to school stories, but I find it a very moving book.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2011-12-26 05:55 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
I did have one thought today (well, hopefully more than one) on why I might like the school stories better, and that is that in the school setting, Nicola is among her peers. I've noted before what I think is AF's particular gift to make the reader feel as though they are one of her characters. They're people. But among her family, she's only one of the two youngest and the reader doesn't forget she's only 13 because those older sisters are forever hammering the lesson home! As is their job :-)
Off on another tangent; it's rather a pity that Edwin is almost dropped completely in the next book. He's only present in the letter he writes to Nicola and references from his family. Nice to see things seem to be working out, but after the ending of Family I often hope he'd walk in. Despite having read Cricket Term umpteen times, it had a slight newness about it when I picked it up after reading Family. I knew who these people were now.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-12-19 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)I agree with this, and yet I also agree with everything said helixaspera said, and like her it is one of my absolute favourites of all the books. The fact that it is centred around an adult relationship we never really see directly, is both frustrating and intriguing. There is a richness that comes from it all being about perceptions, and changing perspectives. I find the culmination of the book, and the Oxford scenes - where Nicola likes and feels sympathy/empathy with Edwin - extremely moving and convincing. That train ride home is one of the best things in AF's writing, and perhaps would not be so good if we as readers had been allowed to see Karen and Edwin interact without the family.
I know a lot of people find Edwin's early behaviour extreme and unlikeable and unbelieveable. I have to say I don't! Maybe because I read it decades ago, as an adolescent - it never struck me as odd, or unlikely. I think norms of parental behaviour have many changed more than people realise. I had a lot of friends with explosive or authoritarian - but not unloving - fathers.
And I have also felt that Nicola understanding Persuasion, at the end, means that Karen has been right in her choice. Or at least right in choosing by her own needs, and not those of her family.
no subject
Also ratfan, wanted to say it sometimes hard to read and like the "missing" books from the series as an adult. At least that has been my experience - I was hugely disappointed by Falconer's Lure, I think because somehow I had to incorporate it into a series I knew so well. Some of it didn't seem to "fit" for me, which presumably would not have been the case if I had read it earlier. I felt rather the same about The Player's Boy - it didn't match up to The Players and the Rebels, which I absolutely love. And Run Away Home.
I'm wondering if I will have to read the new-to-me titles several times to really come to like them?
RMF
In twenty years of legal publishing I've read more divorce cases than I care to think about, and to me it is no surprise that Edwin is the way he is. A marriage breakdown does very nasty things to people's feelings and perceptions, and the death of his ex-wife would only compound matters.
Edwin obviously lacks confidence in his parenting abilities. I'm sure all of us remember at least one authoritarian teacher - and usually it was one who hadn't been in the profession very long.
RMF
(Anonymous) 2011-03-11 07:50 pm (UTC)(link)Anotia in general disapproves of mothers, women with motherly tendencies (Ann etc), married women and girls who like boys (with the exception of chaste Nicola). Mrs Marlow is probably the best of the bunch but even she's a bit feckless and ineffective. I don't think AF minds so much about fathers but their main function is to go off like an A-bomb at appropriate moments, such as cliff-climbing by offspring (and to be taller and cleaner than other people's fathers). So Edwin is sort of in the Anotnia mould, but disadvantaged by being neither an MP or naval officer. The final scene of RMF is genuinely touching though.
Sorrell