The Thursday Kidnapping
In no particular order:
1. It was very interesting to see Forest writing younger children than the Marlows. I especially enjoyed Bobbin and Jamie and the ways in which they were so similar and so different from each other. I liked Ellen and Neil too, but it was the younger children and Kathy who really stood out.
2. I thought it was fascinating to see the contrast between children who were expected to take responsibility and contribute to the household on the one hand, and a child who was, at least at one level, indulged by her parents. There was A Moral In This Story, perhaps more obviously so than in the Marlow books. But a moral that was interesting, especially given the way that parenting styles and children's expectations have changed in the 50 years since this was written. I wonder if there are even more Kathys around now than in the 1950's.
3. I'm going to post about this in stylishly_yours too, but I did love AF's observation that clothes which look quite ordinary on one person can appear quite different on someone else. I love Jamie's style and I completely sympathise about the yellow taffeta dress.
4. Hawks! I don't know whether AF used hawks here because she'd already done the research for Falconer's Lure or vice versa. Because really, there was no need for the thing Neil is interested in to be hawks. It could just as easily have been Clan Tartans.
5. Freddy! I loved Freddy. I really loved Ellen's observation that 'such a lot of real things that are awful have happened to Freddy that he doesn't ever bother making them up when they haven't.' And also the counterpoint to this in Marika.
6. Kathy. Goodness it's uncomfortable reading from Kathy's point of view.
A more honest person would have admitted, if only to herself, that the afternoon had been a failure: but in an odd way herself was perhaps the last person Kathy could afford to be honest with: when Kathy lied, it was at least as much for her own benefit as anyone else's.
Brilliantly characterized and thoroughly unpleasant and yet, as so often with AF, also an object of pity. I felt a real shudder when her mother starts threatening her with what will happen when Daddy comes home and Kathy starts crying properly. And Ellen's observation that even Kathy's own mother doesn't like her (ironically, since Kathy's mother is just like her) is terrifyingly acute. And the moment when boarding school is threatened and you suddenly realise that this is Marie Dobson (or near's no matter).
From 'Childhood as Background: Antonia Forest's Hampstead and The Thursday Kidnapping':
"Take the minor example of that yellow taffeta frock: did children at that period generally wear taffeta? My party dresses were invariably of nylon - flocked, chiffon or net, with stiff paper nylon underskirts - and research among the online GirlsOwn and Trennels communities seems to bear this out. Taffeta was rather old-fashioned (the only respondent who remembered wearing such a garment was born in the 1940's and her grandmother made her that dress)."