REVIEW: The Wishing Well Adventure
Aug. 31st, 2020 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Wishing Well Adventure: Freda C. Bond, Newnes
Fourteen-year-old Hilary Marshall and her eleven-year-old brother Robin were supposed to go to London with their mother for the Whitsun holidays, but she is suffering from a form of arthritis that flares up [I winced in sympathy] and means the holiday is off. Their older, managing half-sister Prudence arranges for them to join a school trip to work on a farm and get out from under her feet, but in the meantime the children have come across something curious in an old book – their father runs a bookshop in Cambridge, and they live in a flat above it. The book tells of St Margaret’s Well, also known as a holy well or a wishing well on the foot of the Cheviots, where people visited, wishing/praying over the water, which was said to heal the sick.
The children get it into their heads that this water will heal their mother, but the adults don’t share their belief and they are to join the school trip. The children decide to travel up to the Cheviots on their own instead, with the vaguest idea of where the well may be. They are a pair of lucky duffers, really. Their ‘plan’ first comes a cropper when the trip is paid for by cheque instead of their being given the money to pay for it, which they banked on covering the rail fare and meals. The person up north they were hoping to advise them about finding the well and help them to get there isn’t at home, but, as I said, they’re lucky, coming across a number of kind-hearted people who offer them a place to stay, food for the ever-hungry Robin and advice about where to head for.
The book is more interesting in its details of life, from the Marshalls’ home life and what I suspect was post-war life. There’s talk of land work, Prudence was in the ATS, where she learned to be bossy, and there’s talk of the black market. In the course of their picaresque adventures, Hilary and Robin foil thieves stealing cigarettes from a train, learn the difference between ‘show folk’ and ‘tinkers’ (in the book’s parlance) and protect rare birds from egg-hunters. They re-encounter too many of the people they come across (sick Columbine and the ghastly ‘difficult boy’ Gerald, who do feel like unfinished business when the Marshalls first take their leave of them). It only occurs to them when they face their parents that they committed a huge lie of omission and could have caused them real anxiety, that is their sick mother and the father who’s worried about her. As for whether their mother will be healed by the water, well, perhaps it will be another fortunate encounter that may resolve matters.
I suppose it was the plot that irritated me. The squabbling between the siblings is credible, with Hilary being the more sensible one, while Robin has some inspired moments. The people they encounter are vivid, it’s just that too much happens – the author admits as much as Robin is too overwhelmed to care much about something vitally important a few chapters ago. It’s all too incredible and too neat. I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Bond before, although I have come across her name on dustjackets etc.
Fourteen-year-old Hilary Marshall and her eleven-year-old brother Robin were supposed to go to London with their mother for the Whitsun holidays, but she is suffering from a form of arthritis that flares up [I winced in sympathy] and means the holiday is off. Their older, managing half-sister Prudence arranges for them to join a school trip to work on a farm and get out from under her feet, but in the meantime the children have come across something curious in an old book – their father runs a bookshop in Cambridge, and they live in a flat above it. The book tells of St Margaret’s Well, also known as a holy well or a wishing well on the foot of the Cheviots, where people visited, wishing/praying over the water, which was said to heal the sick.
The children get it into their heads that this water will heal their mother, but the adults don’t share their belief and they are to join the school trip. The children decide to travel up to the Cheviots on their own instead, with the vaguest idea of where the well may be. They are a pair of lucky duffers, really. Their ‘plan’ first comes a cropper when the trip is paid for by cheque instead of their being given the money to pay for it, which they banked on covering the rail fare and meals. The person up north they were hoping to advise them about finding the well and help them to get there isn’t at home, but, as I said, they’re lucky, coming across a number of kind-hearted people who offer them a place to stay, food for the ever-hungry Robin and advice about where to head for.
The book is more interesting in its details of life, from the Marshalls’ home life and what I suspect was post-war life. There’s talk of land work, Prudence was in the ATS, where she learned to be bossy, and there’s talk of the black market. In the course of their picaresque adventures, Hilary and Robin foil thieves stealing cigarettes from a train, learn the difference between ‘show folk’ and ‘tinkers’ (in the book’s parlance) and protect rare birds from egg-hunters. They re-encounter too many of the people they come across (sick Columbine and the ghastly ‘difficult boy’ Gerald, who do feel like unfinished business when the Marshalls first take their leave of them). It only occurs to them when they face their parents that they committed a huge lie of omission and could have caused them real anxiety, that is their sick mother and the father who’s worried about her. As for whether their mother will be healed by the water, well, perhaps it will be another fortunate encounter that may resolve matters.
I suppose it was the plot that irritated me. The squabbling between the siblings is credible, with Hilary being the more sensible one, while Robin has some inspired moments. The people they encounter are vivid, it’s just that too much happens – the author admits as much as Robin is too overwhelmed to care much about something vitally important a few chapters ago. It’s all too incredible and too neat. I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Bond before, although I have come across her name on dustjackets etc.
