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[nickwhit.livejournal.com]

I never really get the idea that AF planned a story arc for her books (in the way that J. K. Rowling did, say), except at the end of Cricket Term, when we're told that Mrs Carter is leaving to be replaced by Mrs Lambert (for no apparent narrative reason within CT). Which makes sense because Attic Term was published only 2 years later, and I'm guessing that Forest wanted to move the Nicola-Patrick-Ginty situation forward. Has anyone picked up on other 'clues' from one book to another?

Comments

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

when we're told that Mrs Carter is leaving to be replaced by Mrs Lambert (for no apparent narrative reason within CT)

It does explicitly say in Cricket Term, during the Speech Day speeches, that Miss Carter is leaving for a sabbatical year to go travelling, having won a prize in the Premium Bonds (pp247-248, 1985 Puffin paperback reprint) and that it's only a temporary goodbye. Presumably AF exchanged Miss Carter for Mrs Lambert so that Mrs Lambert can be set up both as an antagonist for Ginty in several ways before the debacle with the exam papers and as the kind of person who would get the exam papers out of their packet, spill coffee over them and leave them distributed across a desk to dry in an unlocked office. Miss Carter hasn't been presented antagonistic towards either Ginty or other pupils, and is also shown as more easy-going in smaller things than Mrs Lambert, accepting Lawrie's handing in of Nicola's certificate in Cricket Term. It makes you wonder if Mrs Lambert wasn't herself tipping someone off about the exam papers,taking them out of the packet to check them and 'accidentally' spilling coffee over them as an excuse. Pity no-one ever checked the phone call before Ginty's on that evening. :-)

Miranda's dress suiting Nicola and her presentation of said dress to Nicola, the bear that coughed, at the end of Attic Term directly leads the re-kindling of Patrick's interest in Nicola, much as Ginty in the peacock dress made by Doris first awoke his interest in her, Patrick clearly being susceptible to a bit of designer clothing.

Patrick's warning about merlins not living long and being susceptible to cold etc. in Falconer's Lure sets up Sprog's death in Peter's Room. And we're told that Buster's not a young pony, and doesn't stay through the whole of the hunt in Peter's Room which leads to the expectation that any following Marlow books by AF would also include Buster's death, as per what's stated in The Marlows and Their Maker. Ginty's separation from her usual group of friends when she's held back so she makes pals with Unity in between The Marlows and the Traitor and Falconer's Lure also paves the way for a similar separation in Attic Term in Monica's absence.

I don't think these necessarily suggest a story arc, though, but more that AF laid plausible groundwork for later events.

[manda-09.livejournal.com]

Isn't that Marlow pere? In Falconer's Lure, he says something like, "No good to you Ann, they have a distressing habit of seeming healthy in the evening and being found dead in the morning".

[manda-09.livejournal.com]

There is also, in Falconer's Lure, the reference by Rowan to Kay making, "a good wife". Less than a year later, of course, in fact 6 months on, there she is, "married with three young" as Nicola tells Esther in Cricket Term.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

AF never set out to write a series of books the way JK Rowling did. Reading her introduction to the Girls Gone By editions, it seems as though she thought of her plots in a fairly random way - I wonder what would happen if such-and-such happened to character X and how would they all react to it..etc.
It often seems as if she hasn't planned ahead at all - Ginty who in Falconer's Lure is not interested in horses at all, suddenly becomes the best rider in the family, deserving of a really special pony, 4 months later, in Peter's Room.
That said, having Rowan take up running Trennels at the end of FL meant there could be lots of Lois causing trouble for Nicola in subsequent school books.

[manda-09.livejournal.com]

By the end of Falconer's Lure, though, Ginty's coming over all pony-mad, isn't she? Like one of the awful pony-club-in-IIIA lot, Nicola thinks.

[(Anonymous)]

I think maybe she puts in little bits at the end that can be continued - eg Nicola tells Edwin about the farm log at the end of Ready Made Family, he writes to her about his findings in Cricket Term - but like others here i never got the feeling she had "a plan". I'm sure Miss Carter leaving was deliberate, but I don't think there's an overall story arc.

I guess the row between Esher/Nick end of Cricket Term would have been developed in the next school story, but of course that never happened :(

There's more mistakes, as a result, I think than Harry Potter. Forest seems sometimes to forget about certain aspects of the Marlows or Kingscote that no longer interest her, or she redesigns things a bit to suit her purpose. Then again, I think this means the characters actually develop over the series in a more authentic - less planned feeling - way.

[catwithcreamy.livejournal.com]

Yes, the 'mistake' which always sticks in my mind is that Karen can't stand the human young, is a bad Head Girl etc, and the next minute has 3 steps!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

In Autumn Term, she says Ginty isn't one to cry much. That definitely changes!

[waterlilylf.livejournal.com]

This is my first post, although I found this a few weeks ago and have since been reading old posts feverishly, in the glory of finding that there are other people in the universe who read AF.

I don't think she planned a lot - especially not in the earlier books. I read somewhere that she started off wanting to write a boarding school story, then a family holiday story, then a story about children finding a traitor and it was more that the Marlows suited each genre than anything.

In the later books there do seem to be plot set ups, as people have mentioned.

Anyway, I'm so happy to have discovered this blog!

Lily

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Some of the bits fit in so well that it's hard to believe they weren't planned. Such as the family name Marlow, and to a lesser extent their location in Dorset or thereabouts, being significant parts of the plot in The Players' Boy. But we know that can't have been the plan because TPB was written 20+ years after Autumn Term.

Whether there was any forward planning from book to book is arguable. AF herself suggested that Autumn Term was written with no intention of a series. But if so, what's Peter doing? As far as I remember he contributes absolutely nothing to the plot. Would any other author create a perfectly good character and not use him? I think either there must have been at least an idea that the family could be re-used, or else it's just an example of AF's perfectionism.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

I'd go with AF's perfectionism. The sense I get from her writing is that you could pick up any one detail that caught your fancy, and it could well take the story in a completely different direction. I like to think of the Marlow name as sheer serendipity, though just perhaps she'd been after something literary in the first place - literary but just a scrap less obvious than, say, Shakespeare - and when the Marlowe quartercentenary rolled around, realized she could turn it to her advantage - not unlike how AF's own Will might have gone about it, perhaps). But maybe I hypothesize too much.

[auntyros.livejournal.com]

If you want serendipity, the Merrick connection is a much stronger one. Gilly Merrick is a real person, so to make him an ancestor of Patrick is either genius or the most glorious stroke of luck.

[lizzzar.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think it's a shame that she doesn't appear to have
thought of the books as a series from the start - maybe she would have finished them. But I think she did say that she wasn't sure what would happen and how the characters would react book to book, and perhaps this is a tribute to the subtlety of her characters and their development.

[(Anonymous)]

Peter's there because one brother (Giles) and 'hordes' of sisters with no more boys would just be too unlikely, maybe?