REVIEW: A Strange Adventure
Jun. 22nd, 2019 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI mentioned at the end of 2017 (!) that I’d bought a book by KLO. Well, this is it!
A Strange Adventure: Katherine L. Oldmeadow Warne (inscribed 1943-44)
This is a book for younger readers, its heroine being about 10 years old and the English vocabulary not too complex, though it’s laced with Scots, Norse and Norwegian words. It’s set at the end of the nineteenth century and revolves around one of Oldmeadow’s orphans. Jane Wren is staying at school for the holidays with the headmistress Miss Truscott, all unknowing that the money her now-dead father paid for her schooling has run out. A shy, nervy girl, she is surprised to receive a parcel from India with some belongings of her dead mother’s, but the local vicar, Mr Moore, is pleased, believing it a means of finding kin of Jane’s.
It turns out that her mother had a half-sister, now married and with a family of her own, living in the Shetlands. Jane is conveyed up from London to find her Aunt Meg, her Uncle Jamie and cousins: Kirstie, a couple of years older than her and Andy, a couple of years younger. They are crofters, always working, and Jane finds their life wild and frightening, although she tries to talk herself out of her fears and tears.
The Andersons are very kind, even Andy, who manages to scare Jane with thoughtless comments, for they can see that their life is strange to Jane. For a while, I thought the strange adventure was Shetlands life itself, with the Norse influence, the hardship and the conditions. But a boat trip to Lerwick, which was meant to help ‘Jenny Wren’s’ nerves, goes awry, reminding me of ‘The Fortunes of Jacky’, and there are some trying times before good ones come again. In the face of adversity, Jenny has to step up and does.
There’s a certain charm to this. Oldmeadow inserts a few sentences praising the simplicity of Victorian and island life, and drops in some adult characters’ perspectives on Jane’s difficulties. Learning about the Shetland ways of the time is interesting. Jane is tender-hearted where animals are concerned and prays that some whales seen coming near to shore are spared. But I found it slighter than the Oldmeadow books I grew up with, mainly The Children’s Press reprints, and it covers similar ground, if in a different location and era.
A Strange Adventure: Katherine L. Oldmeadow Warne (inscribed 1943-44)
This is a book for younger readers, its heroine being about 10 years old and the English vocabulary not too complex, though it’s laced with Scots, Norse and Norwegian words. It’s set at the end of the nineteenth century and revolves around one of Oldmeadow’s orphans. Jane Wren is staying at school for the holidays with the headmistress Miss Truscott, all unknowing that the money her now-dead father paid for her schooling has run out. A shy, nervy girl, she is surprised to receive a parcel from India with some belongings of her dead mother’s, but the local vicar, Mr Moore, is pleased, believing it a means of finding kin of Jane’s.
It turns out that her mother had a half-sister, now married and with a family of her own, living in the Shetlands. Jane is conveyed up from London to find her Aunt Meg, her Uncle Jamie and cousins: Kirstie, a couple of years older than her and Andy, a couple of years younger. They are crofters, always working, and Jane finds their life wild and frightening, although she tries to talk herself out of her fears and tears.
The Andersons are very kind, even Andy, who manages to scare Jane with thoughtless comments, for they can see that their life is strange to Jane. For a while, I thought the strange adventure was Shetlands life itself, with the Norse influence, the hardship and the conditions. But a boat trip to Lerwick, which was meant to help ‘Jenny Wren’s’ nerves, goes awry, reminding me of ‘The Fortunes of Jacky’, and there are some trying times before good ones come again. In the face of adversity, Jenny has to step up and does.
There’s a certain charm to this. Oldmeadow inserts a few sentences praising the simplicity of Victorian and island life, and drops in some adult characters’ perspectives on Jane’s difficulties. Learning about the Shetland ways of the time is interesting. Jane is tender-hearted where animals are concerned and prays that some whales seen coming near to shore are spared. But I found it slighter than the Oldmeadow books I grew up with, mainly The Children’s Press reprints, and it covers similar ground, if in a different location and era.
