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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.
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(Anonymous) 2011-12-26 05:55 pm (UTC)(link)