Posted by RichardG on June 26, 2003 at 10:25:52 from 213.123.222.218 user RichardG.
In Reply to: Re: Great Northern Hostility posted by Adam Quinan on June 26, 2003 at 04:16:34:
Reading the books as a child I enjoyed most the ones that I thought I could emulate in some way - all the Lakes books, the two Broads books, and Secret Water and Great Northern ?. WDMTGTS I didn't really want to emulate - too scary - and PD & ML were simply too far from reality to enjoy in the same way. Quite apart from wanting to mess about in boats (in my case on a small lake in Wales) I remember being both delighted and horrified (in about equal measure) when I discovered that the stuffed bird in the school biology lab was a Diver !
GN seemed to me a perfectly feasible scenario, although the secret location discouraged me from dragging my family up to the Hebrides (I managed a few visits to the Lakes but somehow we never made East Anglia). Although I would have preferred another Lakes book, GN was a great deal better than nothing, and the only real regret was that it was the last book in the series and I would not be able to enjoy any more adventures with the crew of the "Sea Bear".
Re-reading as an adult, I find that I enjoy WDMTGTS far more, but still cannot really get off on PD and ML. They seem to fall between two stools - neither as rip-roaringly bloodthirsty as the likes of Treasure Island, nor as "domestic" (for want of a better word) as the others. And if ML is supposed to be a story made up by the S&As, in succession to PD (which is stated to be such in Swallowdale, even without reading "Their Own Story"), I find it hard to credit the role-reversals of Roger & Nancy in the Latin classes. Would Captain Nancy really have agreed to a story in which a fellow female pirate relegates her to the bottom of the class ?