REVIEW: The House by the Marsh
Dec. 19th, 2010 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI have a habit of reading completely unseasonal books. I read this book before the snow first fell, but even so, the contrast between what was going on around me and the opening segment of this book was pretty stark.
The House By the Marsh: M. E. Allan Dent 1966
Tracy, her older sister, Tam, and her youngest sister, Tabby, are glum. It always seems to rain in the Lancashire mill town in which their father's a vicar. He's been ill, it's not been a great few months, but their parents have news for them. The family is going to move to a living on the Norfolk coast (and shouldn't this have been entitled 'The Vicarage By the Marsh'?).
The girls are mostly glad about this newsecially Tracy, who is excited by the change. They move in the summer and it feels like a holiday for a while, although the villagers are slow to welcome them. One or two of the local women are downright disapproving of the vicar's daughters and Tracy, the most sociable, watches as her sisters make friends, while she's miserably aware that she's an idiot townie who is unlikely to get in with a gang of seven boys and girls her age who always seem to be having fun or on their way to have adventures whenever she sees them.
But, of course, she gets her chance. The Marsh Mallows Club are nice, and the three sisters are also attractive characters - clever sixteen-going-on-seventeen Tam, who hates her given name of Thomasina, little cat-lover Tabitha and enthusiastic, impressionable Tracy. Her name's a dimunitive of Teresa, which I hadn't seen before. I wouldn't mind reading about the further adventures of all these characters.
Adventures and alarums come the village's way, as the Earl of Blane returns to the big house (shades of Downton Abbey!). Tracy is quicker than anyone to see that his two daughters may be lonely and rightly accuses the locals of inverted snobbery. There are animal rescues and then, almost inevitably, a flood, which, in a harrowing way, brings the Vicar and his family 'in'.
I enjoyed this book. The descriptions of summer felt particularly vivid in chilly early December. As I said, the characters are likeable, although this bookish reader wondered whether Allan was wise to pick the sister who disdains books for Life as her heroine. But then Tracy's attitude leads to an interesting story. There was a real flavour of time and place - the Osbournes bring electricity to the vicarage and children are expected to entertain themselves and row themselves about. Tracy is dismayed by the old men's accents and dialect at first, just as she's enraptured by the local flora and scenery (the marsh mallows are a flower). One wonders what remains of that life over half a century and however many floods later.
Edited on 9/6/11, mainly for punctution.
I saw that Greyladies has published Allan's only book for adults, which has a similar setting and is on my list to get/read.
The House By the Marsh: M. E. Allan Dent 1966
Tracy, her older sister, Tam, and her youngest sister, Tabby, are glum. It always seems to rain in the Lancashire mill town in which their father's a vicar. He's been ill, it's not been a great few months, but their parents have news for them. The family is going to move to a living on the Norfolk coast (and shouldn't this have been entitled 'The Vicarage By the Marsh'?).
The girls are mostly glad about this newsecially Tracy, who is excited by the change. They move in the summer and it feels like a holiday for a while, although the villagers are slow to welcome them. One or two of the local women are downright disapproving of the vicar's daughters and Tracy, the most sociable, watches as her sisters make friends, while she's miserably aware that she's an idiot townie who is unlikely to get in with a gang of seven boys and girls her age who always seem to be having fun or on their way to have adventures whenever she sees them.
But, of course, she gets her chance. The Marsh Mallows Club are nice, and the three sisters are also attractive characters - clever sixteen-going-on-seventeen Tam, who hates her given name of Thomasina, little cat-lover Tabitha and enthusiastic, impressionable Tracy. Her name's a dimunitive of Teresa, which I hadn't seen before. I wouldn't mind reading about the further adventures of all these characters.
Adventures and alarums come the village's way, as the Earl of Blane returns to the big house (shades of Downton Abbey!). Tracy is quicker than anyone to see that his two daughters may be lonely and rightly accuses the locals of inverted snobbery. There are animal rescues and then, almost inevitably, a flood, which, in a harrowing way, brings the Vicar and his family 'in'.
I enjoyed this book. The descriptions of summer felt particularly vivid in chilly early December. As I said, the characters are likeable, although this bookish reader wondered whether Allan was wise to pick the sister who disdains books for Life as her heroine. But then Tracy's attitude leads to an interesting story. There was a real flavour of time and place - the Osbournes bring electricity to the vicarage and children are expected to entertain themselves and row themselves about. Tracy is dismayed by the old men's accents and dialect at first, just as she's enraptured by the local flora and scenery (the marsh mallows are a flower). One wonders what remains of that life over half a century and however many floods later.
Edited on 9/6/11, mainly for punctution.
I saw that Greyladies has published Allan's only book for adults, which has a similar setting and is on my list to get/read.
