Kids' Stuff

Still struggling with my reading of Lowell's History sonnet sequence, and my reading of fiction hasn't been going all that much better. In early December it struck me that it might be a good idea to read Susan Cooper's fantasy sequence The Dark is Rising once again. I'd read a particularly enthusiastic article somewhere about the title novel of the five-novel sequence (actually the second) and it brought back some fond memories of my first reading of the saga back in the late 70s - early 80s in my early years as a teacher.

At that time I'd acquired the five individual paperbacks published by Penguin, with their very funky-looking covers, but those sort of disappeared when I shipped stuff over here. However, I picked up a single-volume compendium, in Borders, I think, some fifteen or so years back just for the sake of possessing it I suppose and vaguely thinking that I'd read it all again one day. And it seemed that day had arrived in the final month of 2023, so I picked it up from the shelves in Maison KL to accompany me back here.

Sadly it took me until yesterday to finish the first short novel Over Sea, Under Stone. Why so? Well, the opening of the sequence is by far the most 'childish' of the novels in terms of being obviously aimed at a younger readership. It's basically a sort of 'summer adventure' featuring an archetypally middle class family on holiday, in Cornwall, in a mysterious sort of house, with a mysterious sort of uncle and three precocious kids who are left to their own devices and end up on a mysterious sort of quest. It's easy enough to read and written with real craft and the twenty-something-year-old me enjoyed it in an easy-going manner, happily replaying some of the pleasures of what the even younger me had enjoyed reading in terms of other 'summer adventures' in primary school.

But the old, crabby version of me just couldn't surrender to the spell at all. It all felt so long ago and far away. So the easy reading seemed a bit too much like hard work since I felt little or no compulsion to turn each page. Which now leaves me with the question as to whether to carry on with the other four novels. Oddly the answer seems to be I will, but I'm not entirely sure why. (A bit like persevering with Lowell's later poetry, I suppose, but can't be for the same reasons.)