Witch, The Growing Season, Straydog, House of Arden

[rachelmanija]

The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit. Now that I've read this, its sequel, Harding's Luck, is probably the only E. Nesbit book I haven't read. Two kids, Edred and his older and rather wiser sister Elfrida, inherit a decrepit castle and its guardian Mouldiwarp, a talking white mole who commands all white things, like daisies and doves, and can send the kids back in time to try to find the hidden treasure with which they can rebuild the castle and fix the tumbledown homes of the people living on its lands. (Nesbit was a Fabian socialist, and liked to sneak in messages about social justice and helping out poor people into her books.) The book is charming, frequently funny (if Edred and Elfrida squabble, they can't travel in time for the next three days, and their enforced attempts to get along are quite amusing), and the Mouldiwarp's method of time travel produces some gorgeous images, such as when daisies begin marching in formation to create a clock face upon the grass.

Witch, by Barbara Michaels. A woman buys a house in the woods near a teeny tiny and very rural Southern town, and soon finds that not only do the locals believe it's haunted by the ghost of a Spanish witch, but they soon think she's a witch too. Bring out the torches and pitchforks! A fun suspense novel with twists that I found fairly predictable, but are enjoyable nevertheless. Southern readers may be annoyed at her portrayal of the town as borderline-medieval, but since I lived in a rural town with a similar mindset that happened to be in India, I took it more as a commentary on insular rural towns in general than at the south in particular.

Straydog, by Kathe Koja. Borrowed from coffee_and_ink's shelves-- she has a nice review of it in her memories that made me pick it up. A slim YA novel about a teenage girl who works at an animal shelter and becomes obsessed with a feral collie, whom she names Grrrl, becomes determined to save from euthanasia, and identifies with more than is healthy. With that premise, you just know it won't work out well. It's very well-written, and it made me cry in Starbucks. So far I've liked all three of Koja's YA novels (Buddha Boy and Blue Mirror) even though they're all pretty similar: intense, bordering on stream of consciousness first person narratives about teenage artists who have an encounter with someone who teaches them about trust or love or art and changes their life for the better, but in the very YA-happy ending mode where the protagonists never win the contest or save the dog or get the guy or whatever it was that they wanted initially-- and yet in the midst of their miserable life with their alcoholic mother or whatever, there is that little ray of inner hope that says they will survive.

The Growing Season, by Noel Streatfield. Four English kids go to stay with their eccentric Irish Great-Aunt Dymphna when their parents are unexpectedly called away on an emergency. Aunt Dymphna recites poetry in response to all questions and expects the kids to totally fend for themselves. The oldest girl, Penny, who is twelve, gets stuck doing all the cooking and cleaning while the oldest boy, who is thirteen, wanders around with the youngest two buying food and trying to catch shrimp. Toward the very end Aunt Dymphna suggests that Penny didn't have to take on all the work herself, but too little, too late. Aunt Dymphna annoyed the hell out of me, and so did every other adult in the book. The kids had never had to take care of themselves before, and all any adult did was give them vague suggestions, then criticize them for doing things wrong and complaining about not being taken care of. They're kids! They're used to being taken care of! Usually I like the genre of kids learning new skills in a new environment, but this one rubbed me the wrong way by being too realistic about how hard it would be, but by then seeming to take the adults' side and claiming it was actually a great learning experience.

Comments

[sapphsmum.livejournal.com]

I'm not up to reading books at the present but I am keeping your reviews for when the time comes I can.

Thanks for sharing your insights on these books!

I do look forward to someday reading your own story.

Hugs, Christina

[loligo.livejournal.com]

where the protagonists never [...] save the dog

Thank you! You have saved me from major potential trauma! I will never read this book now.

I'm willing to sit through just about any abuse authors want to inflict on their adult or teen characters, but I can't stomach child abuse storylines unless there's superb literary value to make up for it, and cruelty or unhappiness for animals I just won't do at all. AT ALL.

[nwhyte]

Yeah, I remember reading The Growing Season when I was a young teenager and not liking it, for reasons I couldn't adequately identify then but which I think you've put your finger on.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

St. Dymphna is the patron saint of the mentally ill. I would avoid any eccentric great-aunt named Dymphna.

[larryhammer]

I'd avoid her too, if only on the grounds of not being able to say her name, so meeting her could only result in Certain Embarrassment.

---L.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

That's easy enough. It's pronounced "DYMPH-na."

Glad I could help.

[chomiji]

The Growing Season (a/k/a The Magic Summer) bothered me a lot also. These kids think their father is dying, and their mother has just flown off to take care of him in some disease-ridden corner of the globe, and the family is so completely bereft of social/familial contacts that the kids have to be shipped off to an elderly relative in rural Ireland? (I mean, we're an introverted, not-very-sociable family, and in a similar situation, we'd have had at least a half dozen families of friends and relatives demanding to care for our prickly, picky, bookworm of a daughter ... .) As the oldest daughter of a family with a dysfunctional mother, I really felt for Penny as well, but I have a distinct feeling that Streafield felt she was being modern by having Aunt Dymphna get Alex to do wash. This was still the 1960s - Women's Lib existed but was far from internalized in most families.

Elsewhere you mentioned Circus Shoes as having the same problem. But actually, that one was somewhat different. Two things are going on there.

First, Peter's and Santa's real problem - especially Peter's - is meant to be that they thought they were socially superior. Santa also likes to take the easy way out. These are always sins in Streafield, where everyone is meant to know how to work and earn a living.

Second, Streatfield doesn't really believe in infallible adults. In Circus, Gus is by no means meant to be a great guardian. And he knows he's being unfair. Actually, he's got a somewhat similar personality to Peter - which is part of the reason why they clash so much. The other paternal figure in the book, the old horseman Ben, actually does quite a lot of explaining. He's rather bewildered by Peter and Santa, but he doesn't mind telling them what's what, and mostly he's pretty kind about it. Most strikingly, Ben never contradicts or reprimands the kids in front of others: he saves the lecturing for when it's just them.

Most of Streatfield's adults are pretty fallible, when you get down to it. Harriet's mother Olivia is one of the few all-arounders: both kind and competent. My favorite book of hers, Apple Bough, has two completely space cadet artistic parents who cannot be trusted to care for their four children on their own. (The oldest girl, their governess, and their paternal grandfather end up plotting together to straighten things out.)

I'm not saying that Streatfield's worldview is not flawed - it is - or that she has particularly great ideas about handling traumatized kids - she doesn't. But it may be worth noting that I've heard when Circus first came out, British reviewers mainly condemned Peter and Santa as characters, because they were wimps who wouldn't suck it up and play the game. (You might also be interested in this site, if you haven't seen it previously.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how relieved I was in Apple Bough when the Jewish promoter turned out to be neither greedy nor evil.

[chomiji]

Indeed! But "Jewish" seems to be a neutral characteristic for Streatfield - remember Uncle Mose Cohen in Theater Shoes? He was probably one of the most reasonable people in the entire story, as well as being a "successful music hall star." I was always very pleased with his first appearance, where he gives each of them a generous money present for Christmas and says that what he'd prefer they do with it would be to buy books, but that it's their own, to spend as they please.

(There's also Benjamin Bettelheimer of BB Productions in Movie Shoes, but he has basically a walk-on part.)