Posted by Robert Hill on July 21, 1998 at 13:59:23:
In Reply to: Re: Great Northern?-is it real or Peater Duck? posted by Rachel Klapman on July 21, 1998 at 06:46:14:
I have always regarded Great Northern? as "real". It lacks the
seriously improbable fantasy of PD and ML; it contains some improbable
elements, but so do most of the books in the series, and indeed
most fiction. Christina Hardyment classifies it as Peter Duck because
a shot is fired, but it is fired in believable circumstances and aimed,
if I remember correctly, at a dog (and misses).
Some people comment that the sense of locality and the characters of
local people are less convincingly invoked than in the lake and
East Anglia books, but as Ransome never lived in the Hebrides
this is only to be expected.
It seems true that Ransome was a bit embarrassed about its timing, in
that the GND nesting season apparently requires it to be in the
early summer before the school holidays. After using the device
of Nancy's mumps in Winter Holiday to keep them out of school,
he could not think of another plausible one. (Would a Whit
half-term holiday have been too soon?) It may be for this
reason that GN?, unlike all the other post-S&A non-PD books,
contains no evidence of its timing relative to earlier books.
(The ides in this paragraph are secondhand. I may have got them
from Hugh Brogan's biography or from someone in the archives of
this board).
Several of the books contain inconsistencies or near-inconsistencies
concerning the ages of the characters, and I don't think GN? should
be dismissed as a Peter Duck story merely because it might be said
to have a few of these.
I support Jenna's view that the "elders" are more grown up in GN?
than in most of the earlier books (though I think the same tendency
is visible in Nancy in tP&tM too - and I love the way she
manipulates adults in that book).
As many people have commented, though, Ransome does not attempt to
show signs of adolescence in the later books, and I regret this.
I would have liked to see it. But as a child I would not have
wanted to see it, and the books are after all for children.