Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 09, 2003 at 14:14:08 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: You are quite right. posted by John Nichols on September 09, 2003 at 12:41:07:
I do not think that AR was impressed with the little town near SW as he is quite disparaging about it in SW in describing the natives and the place as gossipy. I wonder if the shop keeper was taken from real life.
It's one of the great pleasures of reading AR; he gets these 'ancilliary' things dead right. The shop keepers in Bowness (Rio), Walton, the hospital where Jim Brading comes to in WDMTGTS- and Flushing before the War. The fishermen crowded in to see the pike in the Roaring Donkey. All have that feeling of absolute authenticity. It helps the children's inner fantasies to be even more real.
By the way, for me one of the most wonderful moments in any of the books is the second last phrase in the epilogue of BS, set in the Roaring Donkey.
"Are you the boys that caught that fish?" he asked.
"We didn't exactly...." began Joe.
"Poor lads," said the old man. "Poor lads.... So young and with nothing left to live for."
I first read that when I was eight. It took me years to realise what it meant, and that it was a genuine piece of deep, deep human understanding.