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jaceyWheee....! I'm caught up with my booklogs now. i only finished reading this one a few hours ago.
Booklog 12) 18/4/2010
Charmian Hussey: The Valley of Secrets
According to the quotes on the cover the Sunday Telegraph considers this 'a masterpiece', The Guardian calls it a 'true children's classic; and Time Out sings its praises as 'a paean to the powers of storytelling'... but I'm not convinced. It's description-heavy (450 pages including bibliographies) and story light. In fact – it's not really a story, or at least, not much of one.
Spoilers ahead. there's so little actual story content I have to give it away if I'm going to have anything to say about this book at all...
Stephen (orphan who has just finished a college course in 'gardening') discovers he has inherited a strange old country estate in Cornwall from a great uncle he didn't know he had. Goes there, finds it all a bit weird – though necessarily not scary-weird (so forget the dramatic tension). Eventually pieces together the story of the former inhabitant, his great uncle – a recluse for 60 years – by getting to know his old friend. Cares for said old friend – learning how to look after the estate in the process and when old friend dies, takes over. And the secret? Not much of one really. Old friend was an illegal immigrant 60 years earlier – a child saved when his tribe of Amazonian Indians was wiped out. The dotty great uncle also brought back some new species of critter which have found a secret sanctuary and he wants Stephen to continue to keep them all safe and secret.
It's deeply didactic – imparting a lot of morality-lessons about the destruction of Amazon habitats and native peoples. In some places it reads like a botany text book. There are long passages quoted from the journal of Gt. Uncle's Amazonian trip, but if it was meant to involve the reader in two stories at the same time it doesn't really work. I only kept reading because there were long descriptive passages I could safely skim over because they didn't move the story along. (Actually very little moved the story along.) The protagonist – Stephen – doesn't actually interact with anyone except (briefly) a lawyer, a shopkeeper and a railway stationmaster for the first 300 pages or so and his interactions are limited to the old Amazon Indian for the last 100 pages.
I'm not saying it's not reasonably prettily written – but it's long-winded and I found it very uninvolving and I wonder what age of child will be transported by such a book. It may be one of those 'classics' designated by adults, not by its popularity with children. God forbid that it should be foisted on them to read in school. Most of them will be mind-numbingly bored.
Booklog 12) 18/4/2010
Charmian Hussey: The Valley of Secrets
According to the quotes on the cover the Sunday Telegraph considers this 'a masterpiece', The Guardian calls it a 'true children's classic; and Time Out sings its praises as 'a paean to the powers of storytelling'... but I'm not convinced. It's description-heavy (450 pages including bibliographies) and story light. In fact – it's not really a story, or at least, not much of one.
Spoilers ahead. there's so little actual story content I have to give it away if I'm going to have anything to say about this book at all...
Stephen (orphan who has just finished a college course in 'gardening') discovers he has inherited a strange old country estate in Cornwall from a great uncle he didn't know he had. Goes there, finds it all a bit weird – though necessarily not scary-weird (so forget the dramatic tension). Eventually pieces together the story of the former inhabitant, his great uncle – a recluse for 60 years – by getting to know his old friend. Cares for said old friend – learning how to look after the estate in the process and when old friend dies, takes over. And the secret? Not much of one really. Old friend was an illegal immigrant 60 years earlier – a child saved when his tribe of Amazonian Indians was wiped out. The dotty great uncle also brought back some new species of critter which have found a secret sanctuary and he wants Stephen to continue to keep them all safe and secret.
It's deeply didactic – imparting a lot of morality-lessons about the destruction of Amazon habitats and native peoples. In some places it reads like a botany text book. There are long passages quoted from the journal of Gt. Uncle's Amazonian trip, but if it was meant to involve the reader in two stories at the same time it doesn't really work. I only kept reading because there were long descriptive passages I could safely skim over because they didn't move the story along. (Actually very little moved the story along.) The protagonist – Stephen – doesn't actually interact with anyone except (briefly) a lawyer, a shopkeeper and a railway stationmaster for the first 300 pages or so and his interactions are limited to the old Amazon Indian for the last 100 pages.
I'm not saying it's not reasonably prettily written – but it's long-winded and I found it very uninvolving and I wonder what age of child will be transported by such a book. It may be one of those 'classics' designated by adults, not by its popularity with children. God forbid that it should be foisted on them to read in school. Most of them will be mind-numbingly bored.
