The dark is rising book5/12/2023 The Drew family, parents Dick and Ellen, children Simon, Jane and Barney are met at St Austell station by their Great-Uncle Merry to be taken to the house of an absent sea captain that Merry has taken for the holidays. Cooper’s location is on the southern coast of Cornwall though – her fictional Trewissick being based on Mevagissey, which I last visited in 2010 while staying on the south coast at Fowey this time. Trebarwith beach was surrounded by cliffs, and had rock pools – a proper kind of beach to have an adventure on, as the Drew children do in OS,US. My family favoured the northern coast, Perranporth’s endless sands in the 1960s, shifting up the coast to Trebarwith Strand near Tintagel in the 1970s. Holidays in Cornwall were a mainstay of my childhood. And what about the dog? How does Rufus compare with Tintin’s Snowy/Milou or Timmy in the Blyton’s Famous Five?.Barney would be Lucy, Simon would be Peter – does that make Jane Susan? What other parallels are there if any? I can’t help comparing the Drew children to Narnia’s Pevensies.How well do you think Cooper achieves this? Nesbit, although it wasn’t actually entered for it. This novel was initially written in response to a competition to honour the memory of E. Does it successfully evoke the sense of adventure of childhood holidays at the seaside for you? We’re reading the book in prime holiday season.In my introductory post to the readalong, I posted a few questions to consider while reading the book, and I’ll reflect on those below, but here they are again …
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |