feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2007-08-12 11:45 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2007-08-12 11:45 am
REVISITING: Three Towers in Tuscany
Made the unexpected purchase of a Mabel Esther Allan the other day. Well, not entirely unexpected, as charity shops and second hand bookstalls are my weakness, and you do find these books there...*
Anyway, yesterday, I reread 'Three Towers in Tuscany' after 'discovering' that it's the first in a series. I say discovering because it says so plain on the back page. My copy is a first publication and is ex-library - a Scottish library, so I got it on holiday there I think, though I can't remember the exact year and am too lazy to figure it out precisely. I must have been early to mid teens when I got it though. And I either paid 5p or 75p for it.
Three Towers in Tuscany: Malcolm Saville, Heinemann, 1963.
I'm less enthralled rereading it now than I would have been the first time, partly because I've since devoured more complex holiday thrillers by Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels. And oh bother, maybe I should dial down my expectations for the next Viola Bayley. But then there's another factor about all those writers, they mainly write about heroines. Although this is an omniscient POV and we drop in on Simon and Rosina's thoughts, Simon Baines, a language student newly arrived at Tuscany to stay with his relatively unknown quantity of an uncle for the summer, is the hero/protagonist. Meeting Rosina Conway, an English girl of the same age running away from a villa where she is the guest of the Salvatores, within a few hours of his arrival, he tumbles into an adventure that involves the British secret service and an anarchist plot that stretches across most of western Europe.
It struck me within a few pages that Saville has a very distinctive style, and I was trying to break it down, particularly in the dialogue (because Peter or Penny or Juliet and Simon Buckingham could have been speaking, although this is aimed older - there is a bit more kissing because the younguns have left school). Two things struck me, how everyone's conversation seems to revolve around the near future:
'Although I shouldn't tell you this, Simon, I must say I think this is going to be my very happiest day in Italy.'
and
'Liar,' she said. 'But I'll forgive you. I'm going to show off by showing you Fiesole. First we'll climb the hill to the Fransiscan Convent.'
(from age 34, chosen at random)
and expressing their feelings quite plainly under stress - which given that there's comparatively very little discussion of arrangements or much set up of locale before Simon and Rosina meet and the mystery/adventure kicks into gear for Simon. Okay, I had to turn my random page for this example, and it's Rosina again, but it shows both elements:
'I wish you two would stop calling me Miss Conway and talking about me as if I wasn't here,' she interrupted. 'Sit down and I'll tell Mario everything that happened and then maybe he'll stop being a mystery man' (page 114).
Ah, Rosina. Reading her post-second wave feminism and after a bookshelf and more of books where the girl/woman is the protagonist and the boy/man is the love interest, I did find her occasionally wet. Not for the vertigo, and oh, some of it is temprament, and would I pack clean underwear unprompted if I was scared for my life and about to run away from 'a house of evil reputation'? I like to think that my reading material would have taught me to, but I don't know. But she's expected to play hostess, to be bought things for, to be hysterical/tearful - 'feminine' qualities that endear her to Simon and give him a space to act and be The Man/Hero.(I'm not sure if I want to rush to reread the Lone Pine books in case of discovering Peter is less cool than I remember her. I am particularly worried about 'Where's My Girl?' now.)
There are other familiar elements - the Big Bad is one of Saville's evil, domineering women. There's the theme of the hideouts of master criminals and their foes being in unexpected, out of the way locales (a great boon for the imaginative to wonder about that dilapidated, abandoned pub or farmhouse or flats). Simon's friends Charles and Patrick are awesome with rudely witty banter, the Three Musketeers by way of Oxford. Marston Baines is interesting too, the writer avatar (so many children's adventure stories have friendly writer aunts-uncles)...who is a spy! You can see Simon's capabilities to follow him in his stubborn desire to find out the whole story, to act - and the way he finds entrances and exits to fortresses. So although it didn't knock my socks the way it did before - too jaded a palate? - I will be making an effort to get the rest of this series.
*It was an English-language book at the Eisteddfod! But it's set in Wales, which is probably why they were selling it. However, I am still puzzling over their rationale for including 'Cranford' which is not set in Wales, nor does it have any overt Welsh connection. But maybe it's okay because it's a classic???
Anyway, yesterday, I reread 'Three Towers in Tuscany' after 'discovering' that it's the first in a series. I say discovering because it says so plain on the back page. My copy is a first publication and is ex-library - a Scottish library, so I got it on holiday there I think, though I can't remember the exact year and am too lazy to figure it out precisely. I must have been early to mid teens when I got it though. And I either paid 5p or 75p for it.
Three Towers in Tuscany: Malcolm Saville, Heinemann, 1963.
I'm less enthralled rereading it now than I would have been the first time, partly because I've since devoured more complex holiday thrillers by Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels. And oh bother, maybe I should dial down my expectations for the next Viola Bayley. But then there's another factor about all those writers, they mainly write about heroines. Although this is an omniscient POV and we drop in on Simon and Rosina's thoughts, Simon Baines, a language student newly arrived at Tuscany to stay with his relatively unknown quantity of an uncle for the summer, is the hero/protagonist. Meeting Rosina Conway, an English girl of the same age running away from a villa where she is the guest of the Salvatores, within a few hours of his arrival, he tumbles into an adventure that involves the British secret service and an anarchist plot that stretches across most of western Europe.
It struck me within a few pages that Saville has a very distinctive style, and I was trying to break it down, particularly in the dialogue (because Peter or Penny or Juliet and Simon Buckingham could have been speaking, although this is aimed older - there is a bit more kissing because the younguns have left school). Two things struck me, how everyone's conversation seems to revolve around the near future:
'Although I shouldn't tell you this, Simon, I must say I think this is going to be my very happiest day in Italy.'
and
'Liar,' she said. 'But I'll forgive you. I'm going to show off by showing you Fiesole. First we'll climb the hill to the Fransiscan Convent.'
(from age 34, chosen at random)
and expressing their feelings quite plainly under stress - which given that there's comparatively very little discussion of arrangements or much set up of locale before Simon and Rosina meet and the mystery/adventure kicks into gear for Simon. Okay, I had to turn my random page for this example, and it's Rosina again, but it shows both elements:
'I wish you two would stop calling me Miss Conway and talking about me as if I wasn't here,' she interrupted. 'Sit down and I'll tell Mario everything that happened and then maybe he'll stop being a mystery man' (page 114).
Ah, Rosina. Reading her post-second wave feminism and after a bookshelf and more of books where the girl/woman is the protagonist and the boy/man is the love interest, I did find her occasionally wet. Not for the vertigo, and oh, some of it is temprament, and would I pack clean underwear unprompted if I was scared for my life and about to run away from 'a house of evil reputation'? I like to think that my reading material would have taught me to, but I don't know. But she's expected to play hostess, to be bought things for, to be hysterical/tearful - 'feminine' qualities that endear her to Simon and give him a space to act and be The Man/Hero.(I'm not sure if I want to rush to reread the Lone Pine books in case of discovering Peter is less cool than I remember her. I am particularly worried about 'Where's My Girl?' now.)
There are other familiar elements - the Big Bad is one of Saville's evil, domineering women. There's the theme of the hideouts of master criminals and their foes being in unexpected, out of the way locales (a great boon for the imaginative to wonder about that dilapidated, abandoned pub or farmhouse or flats). Simon's friends Charles and Patrick are awesome with rudely witty banter, the Three Musketeers by way of Oxford. Marston Baines is interesting too, the writer avatar (so many children's adventure stories have friendly writer aunts-uncles)...who is a spy! You can see Simon's capabilities to follow him in his stubborn desire to find out the whole story, to act - and the way he finds entrances and exits to fortresses. So although it didn't knock my socks the way it did before - too jaded a palate? - I will be making an effort to get the rest of this series.
*It was an English-language book at the Eisteddfod! But it's set in Wales, which is probably why they were selling it. However, I am still puzzling over their rationale for including 'Cranford' which is not set in Wales, nor does it have any overt Welsh connection. But maybe it's okay because it's a classic???