REREAD: Treasure at Amorys
Oct. 4th, 2023 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllTreasure at Amorys: Malcolm Saville. Collins, 1969, revised edition.
This is a reread because I bought this without realising I already own a copy. On the one hand, that was annoying – I’m going to make more of an effort to acquire the Lone Pine books I haven’t read and/or got – but on the other, this is a hardback, and the copy I already own is a paperback.
This book is full of an inherent tension, even including the author’s notes, where Saville writes that he was all too aware that some fans of this long-running series just wanted everything to stay the same, even though the first book was set during wartime and he was now writing in the sixties, while others wanted some acknowledgement of the fact that time had passed and to see growth in the characters (unlike the characters, original readers would have grown up and might have had their own children, and even buried a pet or two.) This is reflected in the fact that the first chapter is all about the Ballinger (a deep-voiced lazy villainess) living incognito in London, where her ‘niece’ Valerie brings her young man to her with talk of a money-making scheme involving Roman treasure. The adult me thinks there were probably safer bets for illicit money-making schemes, but I’m sure as I child reader I was all ‘Roman treasure! Cool!’ And then he reveals it’s near Rye and the Ballinger recoils because she and Val have crossed paths with the Lone Piners there. It’s the fact that they’ve crossed paths repeatedly that’s telling. The young man doesn’t care, and Valerie goes along with it.
Guess what? In chapter 2, Mrs Warrender is suggesting that her son Jon, his cousin Penny, who has been like a sister to him until she wasn’t, and their friends the Mortons go to Amorys, a house that has just been advertising for boarders, where Roman artefacts have been reportedly found. The very place discussed in the previous chapter. (I think Mrs W just wanted the rooms the Mortons would have filled up.) There’s some tension between Jon and Penny, because Penny is returning from her school to Rye for the last time (last times had been unheard of in the earlier Lone Pine books.) At 16, that’s it, she’s done (although in later chapters, we see that she could do with further studies in domestic science.) Moreover, she’s going to go to India ‘soon’ to (re)join her father, whereas up til now, Rye has been home, Jon has taken her for granted and she’s affectionately put up with that. But he’s grown up a little (at 17) and Penny has (allegedly, in upcoming chapters, she’ll lose her head and rely on children five years younger than her) become a young woman as written by Saville.
My sympathy for Penny veered wildly. She’s sensitive to atmosphere, of which there is plenty at Amorys. She can’t help being demanding. Every Saville character has this habit of saying (often ordering) what others are going to do next. Seventeen-year-old boys certainly aren’t psychic or always great on picking up emotional currents or saying the right thing (Jon and David Morton are good examples of this.) When she wakes up from a dream/vision of the past, which the reader is far more sympathetic to, having experienced it along with her, and Jon is gone. I was entirely on her side. She’d specifically requested that he stay because she was afraid of thunder, which was coming, while she napped. She had every reason to expect him to stay beside her when she awoke, even if she hadn’t foreseen that she’d have such an uncanny experience.
Mary is more sympathetic to Penny’s experience, as a girl and, as she claims, less silly than she seems (I think my tolerance level for the twins is higher than most! But as a cat person, I’m probably less sympathetic to all the fuss about Macbeth than the general reader.) Dickie is also sympathetic, perhaps because of the twin ESP, Mary’s influence on him and he’s more open as an 11 year old than the teenage boys are. But dragging the twins out into an overgrown garden, spinney and old quarry to chase after a light in the middle of the night and not telling the boys out of pride? Even if she was keyed up and, half-asleep, thought it really was the Romans? That was, as Penny comes to admit, idiotic of her.
I’m more put off than I was by the incestuous cousins stuff when I first came across the Warranders. Anyway, there’s clearly UST, with Jon not sure what he’s feeling and struggling to articulate it, Penny probably having more idea of what she’s feeling and resenting Jon for not reciprocating as she’d like.
The villains are all very villainous, from Ballinger and Val, who’d be known quantities to the reader, to the man the Lone Piners disdainfully call ‘Ginger Whiskers’ or ‘Dogkicker’ who can’t keep his temper or get on the right side of anyone except his girlfriend, to the Crumps of Smugglers Rest. Even at his most pompous, David is clearly made of better material. As a child, because I’m fairly sure I started reading the Lone Pine books at around the twins’ age if not before, I adored David, but I’m no longer that reader, and I was amused when Dickie pointed out he was grumpy in the absence of Peter. Having said that, I could see David’s point when he thought the Major, who he’d known for a briefer period of time than Jon and Penny, was irresponsible in the extreme when he bunked off in the middle of the night, leaving Amorys in their charge, after there had been an attack where Mary had got hurt and could have got seriously hurt.
The twins made a game of being under siege, but they kind of were in the Major’s absence. The Lone Piners debate whether they’re in an adventure again long after they clearly are. I applaud Saville for the trap that closes around Penny, who, having spent the past few hours saying they should all stick together, hears that a baby is in danger, and that in the canal she got into trouble herself a couple of days ago. So, she rushes off to save said baby, finds it doesn’t exist and that she’s been kidnapped kidnapped. This allows her to be brave, Jon to get into a cold rage and biff someone like a tough guy after Penny was hit.
It all works out in the end, but the ending is almost anti-climactic, after Penny is forced to go visit the Mithraic temple that she had a vision of, so that she is the first female to enter it in the flesh (it was a religion for males only, apparently.) They have a late breakfast and, while Penny and Jon are in greater charity because of his heroics, Penny’s future is still going to be in India, isn’t it? I suppose Saville was waiting to see what the backlash would be to his modest developments. I then checked, and there are quite a few books to go in the series. As you can see, I have my issues with Saville, both his style and values, but the way he wrote Penny’s vision was vivid, and there are plenty of well-timed dramatic events in this adventure. Indeed, in chapter 2, there’s a useful life lesson about not diving into canals to swim there, kids!
This is a reread because I bought this without realising I already own a copy. On the one hand, that was annoying – I’m going to make more of an effort to acquire the Lone Pine books I haven’t read and/or got – but on the other, this is a hardback, and the copy I already own is a paperback.
This book is full of an inherent tension, even including the author’s notes, where Saville writes that he was all too aware that some fans of this long-running series just wanted everything to stay the same, even though the first book was set during wartime and he was now writing in the sixties, while others wanted some acknowledgement of the fact that time had passed and to see growth in the characters (unlike the characters, original readers would have grown up and might have had their own children, and even buried a pet or two.) This is reflected in the fact that the first chapter is all about the Ballinger (a deep-voiced lazy villainess) living incognito in London, where her ‘niece’ Valerie brings her young man to her with talk of a money-making scheme involving Roman treasure. The adult me thinks there were probably safer bets for illicit money-making schemes, but I’m sure as I child reader I was all ‘Roman treasure! Cool!’ And then he reveals it’s near Rye and the Ballinger recoils because she and Val have crossed paths with the Lone Piners there. It’s the fact that they’ve crossed paths repeatedly that’s telling. The young man doesn’t care, and Valerie goes along with it.
Guess what? In chapter 2, Mrs Warrender is suggesting that her son Jon, his cousin Penny, who has been like a sister to him until she wasn’t, and their friends the Mortons go to Amorys, a house that has just been advertising for boarders, where Roman artefacts have been reportedly found. The very place discussed in the previous chapter. (I think Mrs W just wanted the rooms the Mortons would have filled up.) There’s some tension between Jon and Penny, because Penny is returning from her school to Rye for the last time (last times had been unheard of in the earlier Lone Pine books.) At 16, that’s it, she’s done (although in later chapters, we see that she could do with further studies in domestic science.) Moreover, she’s going to go to India ‘soon’ to (re)join her father, whereas up til now, Rye has been home, Jon has taken her for granted and she’s affectionately put up with that. But he’s grown up a little (at 17) and Penny has (allegedly, in upcoming chapters, she’ll lose her head and rely on children five years younger than her) become a young woman as written by Saville.
My sympathy for Penny veered wildly. She’s sensitive to atmosphere, of which there is plenty at Amorys. She can’t help being demanding. Every Saville character has this habit of saying (often ordering) what others are going to do next. Seventeen-year-old boys certainly aren’t psychic or always great on picking up emotional currents or saying the right thing (Jon and David Morton are good examples of this.) When she wakes up from a dream/vision of the past, which the reader is far more sympathetic to, having experienced it along with her, and Jon is gone. I was entirely on her side. She’d specifically requested that he stay because she was afraid of thunder, which was coming, while she napped. She had every reason to expect him to stay beside her when she awoke, even if she hadn’t foreseen that she’d have such an uncanny experience.
Mary is more sympathetic to Penny’s experience, as a girl and, as she claims, less silly than she seems (I think my tolerance level for the twins is higher than most! But as a cat person, I’m probably less sympathetic to all the fuss about Macbeth than the general reader.) Dickie is also sympathetic, perhaps because of the twin ESP, Mary’s influence on him and he’s more open as an 11 year old than the teenage boys are. But dragging the twins out into an overgrown garden, spinney and old quarry to chase after a light in the middle of the night and not telling the boys out of pride? Even if she was keyed up and, half-asleep, thought it really was the Romans? That was, as Penny comes to admit, idiotic of her.
I’m more put off than I was by the incestuous cousins stuff when I first came across the Warranders. Anyway, there’s clearly UST, with Jon not sure what he’s feeling and struggling to articulate it, Penny probably having more idea of what she’s feeling and resenting Jon for not reciprocating as she’d like.
The villains are all very villainous, from Ballinger and Val, who’d be known quantities to the reader, to the man the Lone Piners disdainfully call ‘Ginger Whiskers’ or ‘Dogkicker’ who can’t keep his temper or get on the right side of anyone except his girlfriend, to the Crumps of Smugglers Rest. Even at his most pompous, David is clearly made of better material. As a child, because I’m fairly sure I started reading the Lone Pine books at around the twins’ age if not before, I adored David, but I’m no longer that reader, and I was amused when Dickie pointed out he was grumpy in the absence of Peter. Having said that, I could see David’s point when he thought the Major, who he’d known for a briefer period of time than Jon and Penny, was irresponsible in the extreme when he bunked off in the middle of the night, leaving Amorys in their charge, after there had been an attack where Mary had got hurt and could have got seriously hurt.
The twins made a game of being under siege, but they kind of were in the Major’s absence. The Lone Piners debate whether they’re in an adventure again long after they clearly are. I applaud Saville for the trap that closes around Penny, who, having spent the past few hours saying they should all stick together, hears that a baby is in danger, and that in the canal she got into trouble herself a couple of days ago. So, she rushes off to save said baby, finds it doesn’t exist and that she’s been kidnapped kidnapped. This allows her to be brave, Jon to get into a cold rage and biff someone like a tough guy after Penny was hit.
It all works out in the end, but the ending is almost anti-climactic, after Penny is forced to go visit the Mithraic temple that she had a vision of, so that she is the first female to enter it in the flesh (it was a religion for males only, apparently.) They have a late breakfast and, while Penny and Jon are in greater charity because of his heroics, Penny’s future is still going to be in India, isn’t it? I suppose Saville was waiting to see what the backlash would be to his modest developments. I then checked, and there are quite a few books to go in the series. As you can see, I have my issues with Saville, both his style and values, but the way he wrote Penny’s vision was vivid, and there are plenty of well-timed dramatic events in this adventure. Indeed, in chapter 2, there’s a useful life lesson about not diving into canals to swim there, kids!
no subject
Date: 2023-10-04 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 07:21 am (UTC)