REVIEW: Mullion
May. 18th, 2014 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMullion: Mabel Esther Allan. Hutchinson
My copy of this book features a mostly intact dustjacket featuring two girls and two boys in a motorboat with a castle on an island behind them. If I’d looked at it more carefully, or read the blurb – but I just saw Mabel Esther Allan’s name under a title I didn’t own, so why did I need to? - I wouldn’t have come to the story under the misapprehension that it was about a place in Scotland. (I blame the Isle of Mull.) The setting is Cornwall, actually, and the title Mullion refers to a girl of that name, for on her mother’s side, the tradition is to name the children after Cornish place names, which means Saint’s Names. There’s Mullion, her mother is Lelant, her uncle is Austell, and although many of these are shortened or even dropped for a nickname, it’s a charming habit.
Cornwall is like a dream to Mullion at the start of the book. She’s in hot Liverpool, facing the summer at the transitional age of eleven. After the holidays she will be starting at the high school. She’s aware that there was a rift between her mother and her family at Polmerryn – an island at the bottom of Cornwall, although Allan isn’t dramatic enough to call it a feud. Mullion’s mother’s generation nearly all decided to leave for work or to get married at the same time, leaving their autocratic and snobbish grandmother hurt and angry.
But the latter has written to invite the long-lost Polmerryn clan to spend the summer with her, and if the adults can’t make it, their children. Mullion, an only child, is allowed to make the decision for herself – her parents decide that they can’t leave their responsibilities. Mullion, with her affinity for the water, has long lapped up her mother’s stories of her adventures with her brother and sisters, but to her Polmerryn is like a dream. A dream she decides to experience.
So, she and her previously unknown cousins – Columb (Coll) and Pussy (Lulwyn like her mother) and twins Wendron (Wendy) and Madron and Paul – are to come to the island. They all feel a little awed at the thought of their grandmother, but find their uncle Austell is an understanding man and they are to have their parents’ nanny and bedrooms. Quite soon after her arrival on the island, Mullion also meets Martin, a boy around their age, who seems nice and lonely, but her attempts to be his friend and have him be one of the gang seem thwarted by her great-grandmother, who is set in her ways and doesn’t like her family mixing with the lower orders, even though Mullion, at least, has been brought up with money always a concern.
The book tries to sit between outright holiday adventure – the seven children are on the look-out for adventures, which, given the location, of course means a rumoured smugglers’ passage and messing about on and in the sea – and more character-driven matters. That is, Allan is trying to keep within the bounds of believability. So, even though it turns out that Mullion is likely to inherit Penmerry, which she has a very deep feeling for (Austell is apparently unlikely to have children, which given that he’s forty suggested to me that it was code for gay, and Mullion’s mother was the next in age) and the book ends with the rift made up, partly because Mullion and the other children unbent their great-grandmother - they win the point over getting to be friends with Martin, through the offices of the youngest cousin, Paul, about whom all the others had their doubts, as he was babyish and tended to sneak, but the others’ scorn for his behaviour helps change him.
As ever, Allan writes quite vividly about the setting. There are references to the difficulties for Cornwall economically underneath the sheen of tourism. The very real dangers involved in the children’s adventures aren’t skirted around. Mullion makes for a likeable heroine, without putting herself forward too much, she is the instigator and the bravest, while the other children are complementary, interesting characters. Yes, certain things are resolved in a rather pat way, probably because it’s skewing younger than many of Allan’s books, but this is better than most of these types of summer on a Cornish isle stories.
My copy of this book features a mostly intact dustjacket featuring two girls and two boys in a motorboat with a castle on an island behind them. If I’d looked at it more carefully, or read the blurb – but I just saw Mabel Esther Allan’s name under a title I didn’t own, so why did I need to? - I wouldn’t have come to the story under the misapprehension that it was about a place in Scotland. (I blame the Isle of Mull.) The setting is Cornwall, actually, and the title Mullion refers to a girl of that name, for on her mother’s side, the tradition is to name the children after Cornish place names, which means Saint’s Names. There’s Mullion, her mother is Lelant, her uncle is Austell, and although many of these are shortened or even dropped for a nickname, it’s a charming habit.
Cornwall is like a dream to Mullion at the start of the book. She’s in hot Liverpool, facing the summer at the transitional age of eleven. After the holidays she will be starting at the high school. She’s aware that there was a rift between her mother and her family at Polmerryn – an island at the bottom of Cornwall, although Allan isn’t dramatic enough to call it a feud. Mullion’s mother’s generation nearly all decided to leave for work or to get married at the same time, leaving their autocratic and snobbish grandmother hurt and angry.
But the latter has written to invite the long-lost Polmerryn clan to spend the summer with her, and if the adults can’t make it, their children. Mullion, an only child, is allowed to make the decision for herself – her parents decide that they can’t leave their responsibilities. Mullion, with her affinity for the water, has long lapped up her mother’s stories of her adventures with her brother and sisters, but to her Polmerryn is like a dream. A dream she decides to experience.
So, she and her previously unknown cousins – Columb (Coll) and Pussy (Lulwyn like her mother) and twins Wendron (Wendy) and Madron and Paul – are to come to the island. They all feel a little awed at the thought of their grandmother, but find their uncle Austell is an understanding man and they are to have their parents’ nanny and bedrooms. Quite soon after her arrival on the island, Mullion also meets Martin, a boy around their age, who seems nice and lonely, but her attempts to be his friend and have him be one of the gang seem thwarted by her great-grandmother, who is set in her ways and doesn’t like her family mixing with the lower orders, even though Mullion, at least, has been brought up with money always a concern.
The book tries to sit between outright holiday adventure – the seven children are on the look-out for adventures, which, given the location, of course means a rumoured smugglers’ passage and messing about on and in the sea – and more character-driven matters. That is, Allan is trying to keep within the bounds of believability. So, even though it turns out that Mullion is likely to inherit Penmerry, which she has a very deep feeling for (Austell is apparently unlikely to have children, which given that he’s forty suggested to me that it was code for gay, and Mullion’s mother was the next in age) and the book ends with the rift made up, partly because Mullion and the other children unbent their great-grandmother - they win the point over getting to be friends with Martin, through the offices of the youngest cousin, Paul, about whom all the others had their doubts, as he was babyish and tended to sneak, but the others’ scorn for his behaviour helps change him.
As ever, Allan writes quite vividly about the setting. There are references to the difficulties for Cornwall economically underneath the sheen of tourism. The very real dangers involved in the children’s adventures aren’t skirted around. Mullion makes for a likeable heroine, without putting herself forward too much, she is the instigator and the bravest, while the other children are complementary, interesting characters. Yes, certain things are resolved in a rather pat way, probably because it’s skewing younger than many of Allan’s books, but this is better than most of these types of summer on a Cornish isle stories.
