"Delicately balanced on a razor edge of mutual toleration": Rowan Marlow, Saint or ?

[CreativeGreen]

Apologies if the quotation isn't quite right there: no Forests to hand.

Inspired by a post on another thread, I need to talk about the Marlows. Is Rowan spectacularly awful, and Lois an Unsangered heroine? Is Giles ghastly? (I think yes). What's your Marlow Family Liking List?

(I will be posting and running for now but I have many thoughts and wanted to start the thread while I remembered to)

"There will be BLOOD FOR BREAKFAST."

I discovered the missing holiday books at my university library in the education section 2 floors down. I was delighted to fill the bemusing gaps and nobly didn't steal them. 20 or so years later I was back there for a work event and was told all the children's books were offered to staff and then chucked in a skip. Wished I'd smuggled them out in my big coat pockets (before electronic gates).

That is dreadful @RosamundGarth!

All these lost copies, it's so sad! I know it won't happen, but I cannot go into a second hand bookshop or a charity shop without hoping that I'll find some long-forgotten copy of an AF, somehow donated by someone with no idea of its value. Just a liiiittle Peter's Room nestled between the Robert Muchamores and the Jacqueline Wilsons..... (even though I do own Peter's Room)

Don't give up hope! I bought a first edition of Ballet Shoes for a tenner last spring (now sold for significantly more).

My favourite phrase! Please keep adding to the bank of Forest gems to brighten up a dull Monday.

Slightly off topic but I have spotted a number of fellow Diana Wynne Jones fans on this thread too. Despite writing different genres, their use of language, characterisation and plot structure makes both women superb authors. Neither gets the credit they deserve but Antonia Forest gets a particularly raw deal.

AF and DWJ are both such intelligent and original writers. And they do require a little effort on the part of the reader.

Not that much effort, I think, and the effort is more than repaid but, unfortunately, a lot of children, used to the ease and immediacy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid et al, just don’t persevere with them.

Dd triumphantly came home with a hardback copy of End of Term that she’d paid 50p for in a sale of school library discards a few years ago - after first protesting to the librarian that no one should be getting rid of Antonia Forest. The librarian agreed but rather sadly pointed out that no one had borrowed it in the last ten years.

I enjoyed Sally Hayward’s Spring Term. I thought she did a good job and I think she would be the first to admit her story is just her take on possible events after Run Away Home and in no way an official sequel.

I’d read another if she wrote one and normally I am not a fan of sequels by other writers. Kate Saunders’ Five Children on the Western Front and Jill Paton Walsh’s continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels are among the very few I’ve rated.

GGBP seem to do their valiant best to reprint AF in rotation so if you wait patiently it should be possible to get a full set.

....Jill Paton Walsh’s continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels are among the very few I’ve rated.

I have quibbles about those.
I really disliked the Sophie Hannah Poirot novels. I gave up part way through the second or third.

Continuing highly literate authors such as AF and DLS is a challenge - knowing or being able to find appropriate literary references, and not just in English!

I like the Jill Paton Walshes but I have quibbles too.

Mainly that if Bredon Wimsey wanted to be extra polite to Bunter surely he’d have called him ‘Mr Bunter’, not Mervyn. I imagine children wouldn’t have dreamed of using first names for adults in those days unless the adults were very low rank indeed.

Mainly that if Bredon Wimsey wanted to be extra polite to Bunter surely he’d have called him ‘Mr Bunter’, not Mervyn. I imagine children wouldn’t have dreamed of using first names for adults in those days unless the adults were very low rank indeed.

Exactly! It would be hugely impertinent for a schoolboy to address an adult man by his Christian name if he hadn't been given permission to do so. Public schoolboys might say 'sir' when speaking to a much older man.

Christian names were much less freely used all round, even between social equals. Boys and men would use surnames, women would be 'Miss Smith' or 'Mrs Jones', unless or until they agreed to do otherwise.

I recall inaccuracies in one of the books set in the War, but I'd have to re-read it to remind myself what they were.

Agree. IIRC I found the Paton Walsh sequels annoying because they presented Harriet as a bit of an idiot... which she absolutely isn't in DLS.

I thought Spring Term was OK in stylistic terms (which is certainly an impressive accomplishment) but had an unconvincing plot about a letter which read like something from an inferior girls' story, and as someone said above made Ginty into a pantomime villain which she really isn't. The Patrick/Nicola stuff also felt quite fanfic.

I didn’t like Spring Term.

I don’t even allow it to sit on the same shelf as the other books 😄

My copy is on the same shelf as the others but you can tell I haven’t reread it because it’s still pristine whereas the genuine AFs are well-read to the point of falling apart. Though I have a complete set I fear none of them is worth a three figure sum.

The order in which to arrange my AFs was a matter to which I gave some thought - whether to put the historicals in publication order or chronological order. I opted for the latter. The Thursday Kidnapping is next to them on the non-Marlow side, so Spring Term can legitimately sit after Run Away Home as a quasi-AF but not fully assimilated.

I really liked Spring Term and it felt more Antonia Forest than I thought anyone could achieve; however, I know where you are coming from. The letter was generic school story and when all is said and done, it isn’t Antonia Forest. I’d read other continuations if Sally Hayward wrote more though.

My favourites are End of Term (I love all the Christmas play details) and The Ready Made Family (from the home books).

I actually really liked the Jill Paton Walsh DLS continuations. I thought she'd modernised the characters and the situations appropriately and I didn't think her Harriet was silly. I particularly liked her depiction of the grown up kids and their relationship. Economics! How modern!!

I didn’t think her Harriet came across as silly either.

More than happy to go off topic for DWJ! I think if AF had written (for want of a better term) fantasy/magic realism, it would have been Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Witch Week, which were my favourites.

"There is such a thing as going too far, you know"
"Have I gone it?" asked Gwendolen?

Also, Fire and Hemlock, my goodness. And I think Polly's shift from being friends with Nina to Fiona is quite AF - indeed, Fiona is a rather AF character, actually.

Ha! Imagine Kingscote’s reaction to the news one of its pupils had fallen head over heels for a German businessman and run away to Germany to be with him. What must the man’s wife have thought when Fiona showed up? It’s the stuff of AIBU.

And Reg and Ivy make the Commander and Pam sound like parents of the century.

If I had to pick between AF and DWJ to read for the rest of my days, it would be DWJ but it would be a very painful choice and I’m glad no-one’s asking me to make it. I love the Chrestomanci series, as you can guess, but I don’t think there’s a DWJ I don’t prize. Though I’ve never come across Changeover - I think that’s what it’s called - her first little-known adult novel.

It has just struck me you could make a very impressive and enjoyable reading list from the titles mentioned by AF in the Marlows novels and DWJ in Fire and Hemlock. What very literate writers they were.

I seem to have opened a can of worms with liking both Spring Term and Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey additions! But Sally Hayward, who is filed under H on my bookshelves, remembered AF loved Patrick O’Brian’ novels and sent Nicola off to re-read The Golden Ocean for comfort. And JPW turned Duke’s Denver into Hemingford Grey/Green Knowe.

I think my favourite non-school Marlow is Peter’s Room. I quite like Peter and share his hatred of heights. And I do feel sorry for him trying to live up to the naval Marlows. I don’t think I can pick between Autumn, End of and Cricket for the school stories.

I do like Harriet's redesign of the family hall in one of the Jill Paton Walsh ones, and the splendid Hope, and Harriet's hopeless attempts to write.

Another fan of both Forest and DWJ here. Hard to pick my favourite DWJ, but if I really had to I think it would be Fire & Hemlock. You could write a PhD thesis on that book, it has so many layers. Not sure 10 year old me grasped the references to TS Eliot etc, but you get different things from it at different ages. I also love Witch Week, which manages both to be really dark and horrifying and absolutely hilarious. Also the other Chrestomanci books, particularly Christopher Chant, which contains the best cat in all literature (Throgmorten). And last but not least The Ogre Downstairs, which is hysterically funny and should have been made into a kids’ film years ago.

Also Tom Lynn could have been scripted by AF, I think.

Witch Week is fabulous - Nan's notes in her journal about the statuses of all her classmates are absolutely top notch. And I can never see a tinned tomato without thinking of her.

I love Peter's Room, too. Not even for the Gondal fantasy whose macho 'Let's all pretend to be boys, even though more than half of us are girls' swords and torture stuff isn't that engaging for me, it's the farm stuff, the Shippen, the fallout from the twins swapping over for the match and the Play, the arrival of Catkin and Chocbar and the emergence of Pam Marlow as a spokesperson for hunting manners and a sidesaddle hunstwoman, the Bronte conversation between Karen, Ginty and Nicola, which reveals so much about all of them, Sprig's death, the fabulous setpiece where the family troop upstairs to see what everyone can wear to the Merrick's Twelfth Night party, the party itself, the hunt (which we get from Nicola, Peter and Lawrie's POVs) etc.

Witch Week is fabulous - Nan's notes in her journal about the statuses of all her classmates are absolutely top notch. And I can never see a tinned tomato without thinking of her.

Yes - also Charles’s secret code in his journal to express how much he loathes the school. “I got up, I got up, I GOT UP!!”

Yes, I think I like almost everything about Peter's Room more than I like the Gondal bits. I think I've only ever read them properly once: most reads I just skim them until we go back to Marlows. "He may burn for all of me!" ffs. The kid is 13 years old!