Posted by Robert Hill on November 17, 2000 at 16:09:08 from 129.11.159.105:
In Reply to: Re: Ransome and Shute posted by Mike F. on November 17, 2000 at 14:38:51:
Although I'm a fan of Shute's works, there are one or two aspects of his
style that always irritate me. One is that he hardly ever uses the word
"on" - almost always "upon". This would be fair enough in narration,
but he also does it in the speeches of all his characters, and in the
mouths of some of them it sounds seriously implausible. Perhaps as a
child he was frightened off "on" by some old-fashioned Great-Aunt-style
schoolmaster who caned him whenever he used the word!!
Another writer I like, who flourished at around the same time as Shute,
and who is linked in my mind to Shute, is Nigel Balchin. At least one
of his books, "The Small Back Room", is the sort of book that you could
easily imagine having been written by Shute.