OVERVIEW/PERSONAL
I know it's been a while, perhaps this post will explain why. Having just finished her Touch Not the Cat, I was looking forward to reading Mary Stewart’s A Walk in Wolf Wood, but it took me about a week and a half to do so - this is odd for me, as I was reminded when I devoured the nest book that I read in two sittings, interrupted only by a night’s sleep. I didn’t have the same desire to read on with Wolf Wood. I’d force myself to read a chapter and put the book down, and although I was busy and tired from being busy since I begun the book, I had little compulsion to pick it up and read it until I was on a train and had finished my other reading material (newspaper, magazine). Now, I’ve read and reread (or would lapped up be more apt?) all of Stewart’s suspense novels for adults over the years - not the Arthurian novels though. Off the top of my head The Moon-Spinners and Nine Coaches Waiting would be my favourite. So, when I saw that she’d written a book for children, I was intrigued and bought it. I decided to read it having enjoyed rereading Touch Not the Cat (and there’s a whole other enjoyment in rereading it and not wondering who ‘Ashley’ is - I was puzzled and misdirected in the first read.
But having finished Wolf Wood, I won’t be going out of my way to purchase any more Stewarts for children.
Brother and sister John and Margaret are on holiday in the Black Forest with their parents. After a picnic on a hot summer’s day, they see a crying man going into the wood. As their parents nap, they decide to follow him, even though the rumours that there are wolves in the wood seem more real in its darkness. But then they find a mysterious golden amulet, a lonely cottage and a wolf...and realise they are caught up in a time-travelling spell, where a man whose been enchanted into turning into a wolf at night depends on their help to restore him and free his friend, Duke Otho, Otho’s son and his castle from the sorcerer who enchanted them all. John and Margarget find themselves turning into Hans and Gretta and being given opportunities to do that very thing. (It's the spell.)
I didn’tt find it that gripping, things like the identity of the ‘werwolf’ weren’t that hard to guess, the tone of the book was a little didactic, while not really having enough detail to hold you - John and Margaret didn’t feel like real representatives of 1980s childhood and they were mostly accepting of the strangeness of what was happening to them. It spent a long time on the set-up of their mission, and not on the pay-off, characters like Crispin, Blancheflower and even the Duke’s pages were introduced for nothing. There were echoes of fairy tales - the Pied Piper, Hansel and Gretel, werewolf legends, and maybe there was a charge to Mardian and Margaret's relationship, but again, nothing that came to life. The conclusion is literally a page long, making you wonder 'why bother?'. You felt that another writer could have done something far more haunting.
I also managed to tear the dust jacket a little carting this book about when I wasn’t reading it.
In better news, after a bout of rummaging at my parents', I now have got hold of all my Dorothy L. Sayers and Annes and Emilys (so I can reread them) and found Toby of Tibbs Cross, which I knew I had bought and read, but had slipped beneath a bookcase that was itself blocked by boxes. I didn't whoop with joy, but I was grinning for quite a while.
But having finished Wolf Wood, I won’t be going out of my way to purchase any more Stewarts for children.
Brother and sister John and Margaret are on holiday in the Black Forest with their parents. After a picnic on a hot summer’s day, they see a crying man going into the wood. As their parents nap, they decide to follow him, even though the rumours that there are wolves in the wood seem more real in its darkness. But then they find a mysterious golden amulet, a lonely cottage and a wolf...and realise they are caught up in a time-travelling spell, where a man whose been enchanted into turning into a wolf at night depends on their help to restore him and free his friend, Duke Otho, Otho’s son and his castle from the sorcerer who enchanted them all. John and Margarget find themselves turning into Hans and Gretta and being given opportunities to do that very thing. (It's the spell.)
I didn’tt find it that gripping, things like the identity of the ‘werwolf’ weren’t that hard to guess, the tone of the book was a little didactic, while not really having enough detail to hold you - John and Margaret didn’t feel like real representatives of 1980s childhood and they were mostly accepting of the strangeness of what was happening to them. It spent a long time on the set-up of their mission, and not on the pay-off, characters like Crispin, Blancheflower and even the Duke’s pages were introduced for nothing. There were echoes of fairy tales - the Pied Piper, Hansel and Gretel, werewolf legends, and maybe there was a charge to Mardian and Margaret's relationship, but again, nothing that came to life. The conclusion is literally a page long, making you wonder 'why bother?'. You felt that another writer could have done something far more haunting.
I also managed to tear the dust jacket a little carting this book about when I wasn’t reading it.
In better news, after a bout of rummaging at my parents', I now have got hold of all my Dorothy L. Sayers and Annes and Emilys (so I can reread them) and found Toby of Tibbs Cross, which I knew I had bought and read, but had slipped beneath a bookcase that was itself blocked by boxes. I didn't whoop with joy, but I was grinning for quite a while.