Wild Cat Island (was: "In the wake of the Teasel")


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Posted by Robert Hill on March 21, 1999 at 15:39:43:

In Reply to: Re: "In the wake of the Teasel" posted by Peter Willis on March 21, 1999 at 11:47:53:

I'll avoid the temptation to get drawn into yet another discussion of
which books of the series are my favourites. But Peter Willis makes
an interesting related point. Despite liking best some of the non-Lake
books, he refers to a feeling that, to qualify as a "proper" member of
the series, a book should be as similar as possible to Swallows and
Amazons itself.

When I was yound and had read S&A, and was looking forward to the other
eleven, I felt this so strongly that I wanted them all to be based on
Wild Cat Island, and despite enjoying each one thereafter, I felt an
element of disappointment on reading each book in turn; either at the
beginning of the book on discovering that it was not set near the lake,
or gradually on realising that the island would not be the main
location of the plot.

It's an interesting feature of the series that the island, which
gains such a magical significance for the reader in the first book,
and is so much loved by the characters, is never again regained for
long in the direct narration (though some time is spent on it in
Swallowdale and Winter Holiday).

Presumably the reason for this is the simple and practical one that
AR felt he had exhausted the things he could do with an expedition
based on the island. But as a child I found it a great frustration.

In Winter Holiday the weather precludes camping; in the three remaining
lake books, reasons have to be introduced to explain why the
children are not currently camping on the island, and the books end
just as they become able to do so.


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