REVIEW: Paris Adventure
Nov. 14th, 2010 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllParis Adventure:Viola Bayley. Dent, 1962.
I may have been guilty of remembering Viola Bayley’s work too fondly, it having been a while since I read any of her stories – in general, tales of families on holiday/abroad in exoticish locations who get embroiled in adventures involving gangs and new, charismatic half-foreign friends. In fact, when put like that, apart from some of the locations being more exotic, it sounds a bit Malcolm Savilley.
The Adventurers in Paris are the Marriots: Linda the youngest at eleven, Judy, sixteen, and the slightly older Rob. Their father is in the Foreign Office and has been posted in Paris for a few months to replace an ailing colleague. He and his wife have decided to take the children along for the experience and to improve their French. All three are excited for their own reasons. Mr and Mrs Marriott’s delightfulness extends to going on a round of working dinner engagements once they move in, and eventually travelling to the Benelux countries, leaving the children to their own devices. They make a friend of their neighbour Gino (who is really half-Swedish, half-American George O’Brien) a most impressive character who is less well off than them, but who’s apartment block is full of mystery. He and the Marriotts start collecting clues about the mysterious goings on against the backdrop of a Paris that is building up to Bastille day celebrations. But things become urgent when Gino disappears. No responsible adult is willing to take the Marriots seriously and so they, with some friends of Gino’s, have to take matters into their own hands.
It’s fine – having the children be there for a while gives a flavour of the city, or indeed of the many Parises – the ones that tourists see, the one the tourists don’t venture into. The four main characters are contrastingly drawn, from Linda who sees the best in the world, to the more thoughtful Judy, to big brother Rob. There's some awareness of the privileges of wealth, but ooh, there’s an underlying bit of sexism - we’ll protect you if you’ll darn for us! Until Gino and the seeds of mystery that he sows are brought in, the tale is quite episodic.
It must have all seemed so glamorous when I first read Bayley (White Holiday, I think), that and the fact that it was pitched slightly older (a few bad words, a sense of danger, what the gang is up to). But I kept being reminded of better thrillers, really, and although fifties Paris is interesting, the story doesn’t go into great depths about it’s current state. French people are either useful plot devices, cops or villains, or servants who want to feed the children beefsteaks.
I've subsequently started reading Penelope Lively's Consequences, and am finding it quite wonderful and engrossing.
I may have been guilty of remembering Viola Bayley’s work too fondly, it having been a while since I read any of her stories – in general, tales of families on holiday/abroad in exoticish locations who get embroiled in adventures involving gangs and new, charismatic half-foreign friends. In fact, when put like that, apart from some of the locations being more exotic, it sounds a bit Malcolm Savilley.
The Adventurers in Paris are the Marriots: Linda the youngest at eleven, Judy, sixteen, and the slightly older Rob. Their father is in the Foreign Office and has been posted in Paris for a few months to replace an ailing colleague. He and his wife have decided to take the children along for the experience and to improve their French. All three are excited for their own reasons. Mr and Mrs Marriott’s delightfulness extends to going on a round of working dinner engagements once they move in, and eventually travelling to the Benelux countries, leaving the children to their own devices. They make a friend of their neighbour Gino (who is really half-Swedish, half-American George O’Brien) a most impressive character who is less well off than them, but who’s apartment block is full of mystery. He and the Marriotts start collecting clues about the mysterious goings on against the backdrop of a Paris that is building up to Bastille day celebrations. But things become urgent when Gino disappears. No responsible adult is willing to take the Marriots seriously and so they, with some friends of Gino’s, have to take matters into their own hands.
It’s fine – having the children be there for a while gives a flavour of the city, or indeed of the many Parises – the ones that tourists see, the one the tourists don’t venture into. The four main characters are contrastingly drawn, from Linda who sees the best in the world, to the more thoughtful Judy, to big brother Rob. There's some awareness of the privileges of wealth, but ooh, there’s an underlying bit of sexism - we’ll protect you if you’ll darn for us! Until Gino and the seeds of mystery that he sows are brought in, the tale is quite episodic.
It must have all seemed so glamorous when I first read Bayley (White Holiday, I think), that and the fact that it was pitched slightly older (a few bad words, a sense of danger, what the gang is up to). But I kept being reminded of better thrillers, really, and although fifties Paris is interesting, the story doesn’t go into great depths about it’s current state. French people are either useful plot devices, cops or villains, or servants who want to feed the children beefsteaks.
I've subsequently started reading Penelope Lively's Consequences, and am finding it quite wonderful and engrossing.
