OVERVIEW: Holiday Adventure
Nov. 21st, 2021 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllHoliday Adventure: Norah Mylrea. Warne.
I’m mainly posting about this because the title is an actual tag. It’s not very good. It would have been better if the writer had cut out 98 per cent of the exclamation marks and ellipses, which weren’t needed. It ends with a character wondering if another character will like the Penroses, which I think the author meant to be rhetorical, or for the reader to mentally respond ‘Of course X will!’ The trouble is I didn’t like these Penroses* at all, which is a shame as they’re the main characters.
We first meet Judy and Gay Penrose, who have got lost cycling on the first day of their summer holidays. They gate-crash a parents’ day at a boarding school and Judy’s attempt to carry it off gets them in trouble and that leads to Gay accepting an invitation. Their holiday adventure has a touch of the Gothic about it, but is mainly your generic mix of clues and hidden passageways and double-dealing adults.
Judy is carefree, while Gay is a bit of a snob, chafing at their family’s straits since their father ‘went missing in Burma’ (cue period-typica racism). It occurred to me to wonder why their mother, of whom all the children are very protective, couldn’t get a job to get more income, but anyway. The girls have two brothers, Andrew and Maurice, who condescend to them simpy because they are boys and the girls are girls, although whenever they affect to be the ‘man of the house’, they come across as faintly ridiculous.
The other main character is Lady Graham-Campbell, whom the children have nicknamed ‘Old Grumble-bones’. She owns a large country mansion and her personality can change at the turn of a page, more for the convenience of the plot than anything.
*Nothing to do with the Penroses of ‘The Skylarks’ War’.
I’m mainly posting about this because the title is an actual tag. It’s not very good. It would have been better if the writer had cut out 98 per cent of the exclamation marks and ellipses, which weren’t needed. It ends with a character wondering if another character will like the Penroses, which I think the author meant to be rhetorical, or for the reader to mentally respond ‘Of course X will!’ The trouble is I didn’t like these Penroses* at all, which is a shame as they’re the main characters.
We first meet Judy and Gay Penrose, who have got lost cycling on the first day of their summer holidays. They gate-crash a parents’ day at a boarding school and Judy’s attempt to carry it off gets them in trouble and that leads to Gay accepting an invitation. Their holiday adventure has a touch of the Gothic about it, but is mainly your generic mix of clues and hidden passageways and double-dealing adults.
Judy is carefree, while Gay is a bit of a snob, chafing at their family’s straits since their father ‘went missing in Burma’ (cue period-typica racism). It occurred to me to wonder why their mother, of whom all the children are very protective, couldn’t get a job to get more income, but anyway. The girls have two brothers, Andrew and Maurice, who condescend to them simpy because they are boys and the girls are girls, although whenever they affect to be the ‘man of the house’, they come across as faintly ridiculous.
The other main character is Lady Graham-Campbell, whom the children have nicknamed ‘Old Grumble-bones’. She owns a large country mansion and her personality can change at the turn of a page, more for the convenience of the plot than anything.
*Nothing to do with the Penroses of ‘The Skylarks’ War’.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-21 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-21 03:13 pm (UTC)