Brilliant - I loved this. Forest did read Daughter of Time - I'm sure it's mentioned in interviews with her, so quite an inspired choice! I think it may well have set off Forest's Richard III interest, so completely plausible that Patrick would be inspired by it too.
I also love the controlled way you go between the different characters points of view, and the language. When he "tweaks" the blankets, I get a little thrill, as if references back to one of my favourite scenes in Players' Boy and the Rebels, where the fever-struck Nick "tweaks" his blanket.
For some reasons blankets just call to be tweaked! I haven't read the Players books since they first came out (in GGBP), so had completely forgotten that scene - must reread...
Very nice! I particularly liked Nicola's dawning realisation not just that Patrick had got it all from a book but that he'd allowed her to think it was his own idea and that that was a problem for her (more of her instinctive response against superficiality, which we see in her responses to Lois and Ginty, perhaps?)
You know, for some odd reason when you mentioned Tey and Patrick in bed after a cliff fall, my mind didn't go immediately to A Daughter of Time but to Brat Farrar, the one with another Patrick, and another cliff fall, that time without a happy outcome. And we know Ginty has read Brat Farrar and the geography of that, in particular the closeness of the channel ports, is even more reminiscent of Trennels, Mariot Chase and environs.
I haven't read Brat Farrar, I'm missing it and The Franchise Affair from my collection. Must track down a copy and have a think about that.
I am glad that it came across that Nicola wasn't disappointed that it wasn't original, just that it had been presented so. I am sure that the perceived dishonesty would sit uncomfortably with her. I imagined that bored Patrick would get caught up in his reading and by the time he was well again had completely forgotten the book that sparked it all. "The cleverness of me!" etc...
That was wonderful. Such a lovely glimpse of Jon. And I can completely believe that a bored kid who's still recovering from trauma would suppress the original book that hefted him out of the slump, and leave him with only the memories after his crash reading of real history.
Now I'm imagining a scene wherein a silent Nicola presses the Tey into Patrick's hands, and watches the cascade of memories, and emotions, circling back to Jon.
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I also love the controlled way you go between the different characters points of view, and the language. When he "tweaks" the blankets, I get a little thrill, as if references back to one of my favourite scenes in Players' Boy and the Rebels, where the fever-struck Nick "tweaks" his blanket.
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You know, for some odd reason when you mentioned Tey and Patrick in bed after a cliff fall, my mind didn't go immediately to A Daughter of Time but to Brat Farrar, the one with another Patrick, and another cliff fall, that time without a happy outcome. And we know Ginty has read Brat Farrar and the geography of that, in particular the closeness of the channel ports, is even more reminiscent of Trennels, Mariot Chase and environs.
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I am glad that it came across that Nicola wasn't disappointed that it wasn't original, just that it had been presented so. I am sure that the perceived dishonesty would sit uncomfortably with her. I imagined that bored Patrick would get caught up in his reading and by the time he was well again had completely forgotten the book that sparked it all. "The cleverness of me!" etc...
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Now I'm imagining a scene wherein a silent Nicola presses the Tey into Patrick's hands, and watches the cascade of memories, and emotions, circling back to Jon.
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