The Way to Sattin Shore by Philippa Pearce

First published 1983

Here it was, between a white stone cross on one side, and a plinth with a kind of toddler-angel on top, on the other. A plain tombstone, with a plain inscription. First of all: IN MEMORY OF JAMES TRANTER, and a date half a century earlier. That would be her grandfather, her father's father. Then, below: AND OF HIS SON ALFRED ROBERT TRANTER, and then the date of her own birth: the very day and month and year. On an impulse, Kate leant forward and traced with her finger the lettering of the name and the date -- her date.

Kate Tranter is the youngest member of her family. Her two brothers are rather older, and Kate is a lonely child, a little isolated within the family and reserved at school. She's curious about her dead father - he must be dead, the gravestone proves it - but her mother and grandmother are reluctant to talk about him. She found the grave on her own, and doesn't tell anyone that she visits it. Only Syrup knows, but being a cat, he doesn't give her away. As well as the mystery of the gravestone, there's the strange circumstances surrounding a letter which arrives for her grandmother, which disappears almost immediately and no-one will talk about it. Then one day the tombstone disappears, and with it all Kate's certainty about her father. A conversation with her brother adds a new piece to the jigsaw, though, a place called Sattin Shore where someone drowned. So Kate decides to visit this place for herself.

Despite her isolation, there's a lot of family life in this book. Both brothers introduce Kate to new experiences and, although Kate's mother can be loving and warm. But there's a darkness at the heart of the family: old Mrs Randall, Kate's grandmother, is cold and withdrawn, and exercises too much influence over her daughter. It is she who decides that Kate's father will not be mentioned, and that his children must forget all about him. She lives on the ground floor, next to the front door, and Kate is reluctant to even pass her partly-open doorway -- she's a brooding presence throughout the book, oppressive even at times of happiness, and a cause of family tensions. But if I make in sound like unalleviated misery, it's not. There's fun, too, in a sledging in the snow, a growing friendship at school, and the gradual sense of discovery about the past. And through it all, a purring golden thread, the presence of Syrup, rendered so beautifully that you can almost feel his thick fur, and his toes curling and uncurling in pleasure.

I can't recommend The Way to Sattin Shore too highly, it's told sensitively and with humour and Kate is one of those characters who stays in your mind, prickly and inquisitive and cautious all at the same time. Her inability to ask the questions that she needs answers to is compelling and completely convincing. She's a real person.

An Enemy at Green Knowe by L.M. Boston

Published 1964

As a child, the only one of Lucy Boston's books I read was the first, The Children of Green Knowe. At the time I think I found it a little wordy, but it stuck in my head ever afterwards, so that it was with enormous pleasure that I've rediscovered the series as an adult - if I still have one left to read, it's because I'm rationing myself, because to begin one is to be lost in a world of enchantment. Old houses and gardens are equally beguiling, and a story which combines both is perfection. You can see a little of that enchantment, I think, in the cover illustration, which is by L.M. Boston's son, Peter, and shows the "real" Green Knowe, the manor at Hemingford Grey near Cambridge, which she bought in 1939. This is one of those instances where house and garden are characters as important as the people, and the stories all reflect the author's love for her surroundings and her home's imagined history. You can read some of that history here, in an interview with her daughter-in-law, Diana, who now runs the house.


In An Enemy at Green Knowe, Tolly, whom we met in the first book, and Ping, who was introduced in The River at Green Knowe, are spending a holiday with Tolly's grandmother, Mrs Oldknow. Soon after their arrival, Mrs Oldknow receives a letter from a Dr Melanie Powers, asking to visit the house to search for rare manuscripts associated with one of Green Knowe's earlier residents, the black magician Dr Vogel. Hard on the heels of her letter, Dr Powers turns up, and proves to be unpleasantly pushy and insinuating, not in the least prepared to accept that all Dr Vogel's books have been destroyed.  She quickly proves to be a very real threat and it takes all their combined resourcefulness to hold her at bay.


I've seen other reviewers commenting on how dark this book is compared to the others in the series. For me, that's not a negative, nor is the introduction of witchcraft. There are certainly places where you hold your breath with anticipation - Dr Powers is genuinely scary - but the frightening episodes are over quite quickly, and not protracted in the way they might be some more recent novels, or in a book aimed at slightly older children. There are minor victories along the way, allowing for bedtime readings which see Tolly and Ping secure within the walls of Green Knowe for another night, at least.

Peter Boston's illustrations are an essential part of the Green Knowe books - done on scraperboard, they are rather hard to reproduce here as the paper quality of my Puffin edition means that it doesn't scan well, but I think you can see the intricacy that makes you want to study the detail. They provide the perfect reflection of the delicacy with which the stories are told, and their deep sense of magic and history. The best of them all is The River at Green Knowe, and I'll talk about that another day, but they are all magical, and can all be read on their own, each creating a perfect world which welcomes and surrounds the reader.

Fell Farm Campers by Marjorie Lloyd

Published 1960

This is the final one of the Fell Farm books, set the Easter before the children's parents return from abroad, when they expect everything may be about to change. The holiday nearly doesn't come off - Fell Farm, which is a National Trust property, has the builders in, and there's no room. Happily, they think of camping, and the Jenks can squeeze young Sally in despite the work, so they can go ahead, which is just as well really, as there's not much room for them all in Aunt G.'s London flat either, and she's very anxious about whether the neighbours will complain when they are all there at once.

Once they get there the children set up camp by the tarn quite near the farm - far enough away to be independent, but close enough to be able to collect milk and other supplies easily, and for Sally to run messages between the two, which pleases her. They also all return to the farm once a day for a proper meal, cooked by the bountiful Mrs Jenks on oil stoves in the big barn. The rest of the day they are free to roam, whether it's just to collect wood (pig-sticking) to keep the camp fire going, or to set off on one of their mammoth hikes across the fells - they are indefatigable walkers!

Just after nine they started along the edge of the little Heron Tarn, scrambled over the wall into the narrow mountain road and turned sharply right downhill. The whole length of that rough, twisty little lane dropping steeply down to Oxenfell, gave the most tremendous views across all the ridges and deep cut valleys towards Wetherlam, Bowfell, the Langdale Pikes, and the rest, and they discussed the route as they tramped down with the whole region spread in front like a map, fullscale and gloriously coloured.

Various adventures occur - brushes with fellow campers, a hunt for a sheep-killing dog...Jan and Hyacinth set off on a birdwatching expedition which nearly ends in disaster again. The story romps along, told in the third person this time: Hyacinth is on strike and says she won't keep a journal as there will be lots of other work to do while they are camping (indeed, Kay seems to spend all her spare time darning socks!) These are certainly books to charm the adult reader, but I think that a child who enjoyed the outdoor life might find much to entertain, as well, and I well remember day-dreaming about being able to go off on camping holidays when I was a child (conveniently ignoring my dislike of midges, aversion to spiders and preference for a comfortable bed, even then). There are pleasing cat and dog characters too.

The Midnight Kittens by Dodie Smith

Something of an oddity, The Midnight Kittens was first published when Dodie Smith was 82, when it came out as the same time as the second volume of her autobiography, Look Back with Mixed Feelings. I suspect it works best for the generation for whom 101 Dalmatians was a newly published book - they'll be able to read and revisit their childhoods. For children now, the headmaster whose methods are "modern" and based on counselling theory, and the twins' school, will seem odd, and the hippy squatters will be an anachronism in a time when travellers are mostly feared and despised.

It's the story of Tom and Pam's half-term visit to the grandmother who has cared for them since the death of their parents, and the four kittens who come to eat the food put out for the hedgehogs. It's a very slight story and its brevity makes it seem unnecessarily hysterical, I'm afraid. A more leisured pace would have allowed some time to put the children's fears for the kittens into perspective, while also foregrounding the adventure which follows their meeting with the past owner of Freke Hall.

The book's real magic now is in the enchanting illustrations by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone. However, it might be rather nice for reading aloud, and perhaps there are still old-fashioned little girls who would enjoy reading it for themselves.

Fell Farm for Christmas

It's a little late to be writing about this, but the temperature has just dropped sharply as the sun set, so not too inappropriate!

Children just don't have holidays like this any more: the five Brownes - two pairs of twins and their younger sister - return to the Westmorland farm they had visited during the summer, ready for a winter holiday of brisk walks and birdwatching. The story starts with their train journey, via Crewe, Oxenholme and Windermere, and I was instantly nostalgic for all the times in childhood I travelled on that line (for some reason I was particularly fond of Crewe station, perhaps because it used to be such an enormous interchange that there was always plenty to look at):

We were somewhere between Hest Bank and Carnforth - the bit where the railway runs along the edge of the sea, and you usually get the first view of the fells, looking simply wonderful across the great curve of the bay.
But this time it was half past four on an afternoon in late December, and the light had gone from the sky, except for some long, dim bars of gold just above the horizon. I swore that I could just glimpse the faintest gleam of snow-caps, pale as silver. The others said that it was imagination, and maybe it was; but it really didn't matter, because we all knew that they were there.

Hyacinth, our narrator, combines a romantic imagination (she has her notebooks with her, so that she can continue writing The Mystery of the Blood-Stained Hippopotamus during the holiday) and down-to-earth practicality about things like supplies for walks, and we're plunged straight into farm life and long tramps round the fells. In one of my favourite chapters Hyacinth's twin Jan rescues a heron which has got trapped in a pond, frozen in while fishing. A few years ago I rescued a heron myself, and could share their wonder at being so close to such a remarkable bird, and their pleasure in its return to health. The sheep rustling scene, on the other hand, would make any modern parent's blood run cold, I fear! And I can't think that many children wash their own socks these days, more's the pity.

Fell Farm for Christmas is an attractively brisk romp, the sort of holiday children of my generation dreamed of, with lots of fresh air, hearty food and adventure. It was published the year I was born and the past is a golden place in these pages. My own holidays weren't so eventful (I never knowingly met a sheep rustler!), but otherwise not so very different from what is described here. I shall pass it on next to my mother, who spent the war not far from Carnforth, and still gets wistful about it.

Oh, and there are maps. I do like a map and they are suitably Wainwright-ish.

Murkmere by Patricia Elliott

It's really great when something a little different comes along, and this was one of those occasions. I think I had read a review of Murkmere somewhere, though I'm really not certain. Anyway, I was looking for a book swap, and decided to take a chance on it, and I'm really glad I did.

Murkmere is the story of 15-year-old Aggie, who is summoned to Murkmere Hall from her village to be companion to the Master's ward, Leah. Aggie's mother was once a maid at the Hall, but she doesn't know what to expect when she arrives, and she finds a strange, dilapidated house dominated by the compelling Silas Seed, the crippled Master's steward and right-hand man in everything. Not only is he in charge of all the Master's affairs, he oversees the moral welfare of the servants, ensuring that the dictates of the Ministration are adhered to. At first Aggie is overwhelmed by the charismatic Silas, but gradually, as she tries to meet the challenges posed by her position as companion to the troubled, wayward Leah, she begins to question his actions and, almost despairingly, her own beliefs.

What lends this book a haunting quality is its setting in the English fenland, and its bird-inspired religion. Although there's not the technology to make it fit into the category, there's a darkly steampunk feel to it nonetheless, perhaps because we don't really know how the world came into being - there's a hint that it might be our world, changed after humans had somehow transformed themselves into the mysterious and reviled avia; the hypocritical Ministration, constantly on the watch for rebellion, certainly have resonances of the post-civil war period in England and the puritan protectorate. And the author makes clear in a brief note at the start: "The superstitions in this novel are found in British folklore", which makes it, for me at any rate, all the more powerful, harking back to first hearing of the story of the Children on Lir, and the hair rising on the back of my neck, because it seemed more like a memory than a new story. Elliott says of writing the book:

all I had at first was the image of a girl, painstakingly sewing a swanskin back together. I had to find out why. Who was the girl, and why was the swanskin in pieces? 

The winter fenland, the swans that Leah must be kept away from, the Master's painful yearning after forbidden knowledge, the Ministration's duplicity and decadence - all combine to create a lyrical, wistful novel.

There is a sequel, Ambergate, which I shall have to read. I'm sort of afraid that I shan't love it as much, because I find the sere countryside of the setting so compelling in the first, and I know that the second moves to the city. But the Ministration is tantalisingly portrayed in Murkmere, something nasty but intriguing, so I have to know more...

Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge

I was reading Ana's excellent (as ever) review of Fly by Night the other day and was very pleased that she'd enjoyed it so much, because I think it is one of those really original books that can make you feel happy that someone out there is writing such good fiction; however, I noticed that one of the commenters spoke less than enthusiastically about Frances Hardinge's second book, Verdigris Deep, describing it as Alan Garner/Diana Wynne Jones but not as good. I've had it on the TBR shelf for ages, and frankly, was doing my usual thing of saving it up for some unspecified special occasion - which, since such times occur relatively infrequently chez nous, is just plain daft).

It only took me a few hours to read and, at first, I thought it was okay but nothing special. I agreed about it being Garner/Wynne Jones territory - lots of echoes of Elidor and Fire and Hemlock in the mean streets of Magwhite and the scary way that things start to glow around Josh, the eldest of the three protagonists. Then, about halfway through, I realised that I wasn't being disappointed any more, but had been drawn into the story completely, convinced by the way that Hardinge tackles the children's response to the disintegration of their already shaky world. Because, of course, they are all outsiders: Josh could be popular at school but doesn't choose to be, Ryan is small and speccy and worried, Chelle can't stop talking although no-one listens to her; she's pale and asthmatic and sort of just tags along with the others. They are all drawn to Magwhite precisely because they shouldn't be there and when they don't have any money to pay for the bus home, they know that there will be serious trouble. Which they need to avoid: Chelle doesn't know how to deal with being in trouble, Ryan doesn't want to provoke any more family rows, and Josh will be exiled to his aunts' house where he won't be allowed out. So they steal the money from a long-neglected well. And suddenly it's not just everyday trouble they have to contend with, because they are all changed, in frightening ways.

This book is aimed, I think, at a slightly younger audience than Fly By Night, but it doesn't pull its punches. Hardinge knows that there's a lot going on in children's heads that adults don't realise, and some of it's because they don't have the experience to make sense of the adult world, even when to the grown-ups they look bright and manipulative and sometimes just plain bad. By the end of the story, it's all pain and rain and urgency - in 2007, when it was published, there were massive floods in England that summer and it must have seemed prophetic, with its images of rising waters.

The UK edition (it was published in the US as Well Witched) is a thing of great beauty. The picture here really doesn't do it justice, I think it's one of the loveliest book jackets I've ever seen. The back is as lovely as the front. I'd have included it here, but it's too dark to scan easily - what you can't see is that it really looks like tarnished copper. I'm tempted to take it off the book and put it on my wall.

To sum up, Verdigris Deep lacks the wondrous inventiveness of Hardinge's first book, but it's still a well-told story, atmospheric and exciting, firmly-rooted in a nice urban grittiness, and a classy example of the genre. I recommend it.