Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on April 04, 2006 at 09:58:35 from 213.38.124.194 user ACB.
As a boy, I liked "Swallowdale" best because it is the longest book, therefore there is more of it to enjoy.
By being set once again on the Lake, it confirms the reality of the place, as somewhere very special, which the characters can return to, and so by extension somewhere that the reader might visit. In particular, both Swallowdale, with Peter Duck’s cave, and Wild Cat Island, with the secret harbour, are refuges. If you can’t go there, at least you can read about them and imagine going there.
It shows you the sort of adventures that you can have for yourself if your family don’t have a boat (mine didn’t).
A lot of it is written from Titty’s and Roger’s points of view. Roger’s adventure with the sprained ankle and the charcoal burners is a good thing for a little boy to read if he is laid up in bed for a day or two, especially if he is in a strange place, like a hospital.
As an adult, I like it best because, besides the foregoing points, which take me back to my own childhood and allow me to revisit the emotions that I felt then, Ransome takes us through John’s and Susan’s feelings, too - John’s sense of shame and failure over wrecking “Swallow”, his need to compensate, and Susan’s need to prove that she can cope properly.
The snippet that “Susan always took charge on railway journeys, and was always tired the following day” tells us a lot about a little girl who has a lot to prove to her parents, especially the absent Daddy. I don't find Susan an improbable character - I'm married to a "Susan type", who identifies strongly with the character.
The vignettes of the Swainsons' farmhouse, with the fire in the grate in summer, the white dial long case clock and the copper kettle displayed in the parlour and Mary, in clogs, churning the butter by hand, paint a picture of a vanished world, like the lost world of the wooden boatyards that John visits. I had great-uncles who farmed in what would now be an old fashioned way, and I have a wooden boat, so these scenes say something to me, also.
On the whole, still the book I re-read most.