Elinor Lyon: Dragon Castle
Jan. 5th, 2009 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustDragon Castle was one of the lost books of my childhood, one of the books I remember with great affection and have been looking for all my adult life, without success - until last month, when a copy of the new Fidra Books edition fell all unexpectedly into my hands (this was a delightful surprise, but has caused all sorts of confusion, which we are only now sorting out.
It's a bit nerve-wracking, being reunited with an old friend after so many years apart: what if we don't get on? what if we've changed, if we have nothing to say to each other? And, as I said first time round, our interests are very different: I wouldn't necessarily expect to enjoy a book about healthy outdoor children doing healthy outdoor things. But of course there were reasons why we were such friends in the first place, and they are still good. From the first page, with its introduction of Martin, the central character, travelling to Wales alone, I was enjoying myself. There's nothing flashy about the writing, but it's quite clear that Martin is tremendously excited to be going to Wales and that on the one hand he is excited because he is rather young, and very open about his every thought (characteristics which will affect what happens later) and on the other hand he is excited because it is, after all, very exciting.
Unlike most of the books I loved most as a child, and despite the promising title, Dragon Castle contains no magic. Yet it feels almost as if it does - as if it were set in a magical world in which the narrative occupies a space in which magic just so happens not to be taking place at present. And perhaps this is why Dragon Castle was so much my favourite of Elinor Lyon's books: it has an ancient sword, a lost ring, a concealed castle which itself hides another secret. But I associate the same quality with all of her books: she is good at magical places, hidden places of which only the children know the secret and to which only they can go.
The plot of Dragon Castle is built around two families of children, with Martin, by a huge plot coincidence, caught uncomfortably between them. Naturally, because how better to demonstrate the value of a secret than by showing people desperate to learn it (and others desperate to prevent it being learned)? Martin is sent away to stay with relations of his father, with whom his family has not had any recent contact, while his father recovers from an operation. It turns out that another family in the same village are related to his mother, and that the children of this family are more or less at war with the children of Martin's hosts. There's a fine line to be trodden here, in making the reader sympathise with the 'right' children against the 'wrong' ones, without making the latter into monsters and the former just a little too good to be true - too tanned and energetic and resourceful. This works better with the 'good' family, who for all their healthy outdoor virtues and skills are real people, but the affluent Ollerford family are close to being caricatures. THey'd be at home in the background of a Jane Austen novel, I think, the mother always overwhelmed with the sheer effort of doing anything at all, the son an overindulged bully, the daughter pulled along in his wake, and the father absolved of responsibility for this mess because he is never home. Yet somehow all must be reconciled at the end of the story.
One final pleasure - Fidra have kept the original illustrations, by the author: the slightest of line drawings in which the children appear in silhouette, and I was astonished at how clearly I had remembered them. There is even - didn't I say it feels like reading a fantasy? - a map.
It's a bit nerve-wracking, being reunited with an old friend after so many years apart: what if we don't get on? what if we've changed, if we have nothing to say to each other? And, as I said first time round, our interests are very different: I wouldn't necessarily expect to enjoy a book about healthy outdoor children doing healthy outdoor things. But of course there were reasons why we were such friends in the first place, and they are still good. From the first page, with its introduction of Martin, the central character, travelling to Wales alone, I was enjoying myself. There's nothing flashy about the writing, but it's quite clear that Martin is tremendously excited to be going to Wales and that on the one hand he is excited because he is rather young, and very open about his every thought (characteristics which will affect what happens later) and on the other hand he is excited because it is, after all, very exciting.
Unlike most of the books I loved most as a child, and despite the promising title, Dragon Castle contains no magic. Yet it feels almost as if it does - as if it were set in a magical world in which the narrative occupies a space in which magic just so happens not to be taking place at present. And perhaps this is why Dragon Castle was so much my favourite of Elinor Lyon's books: it has an ancient sword, a lost ring, a concealed castle which itself hides another secret. But I associate the same quality with all of her books: she is good at magical places, hidden places of which only the children know the secret and to which only they can go.
The plot of Dragon Castle is built around two families of children, with Martin, by a huge plot coincidence, caught uncomfortably between them. Naturally, because how better to demonstrate the value of a secret than by showing people desperate to learn it (and others desperate to prevent it being learned)? Martin is sent away to stay with relations of his father, with whom his family has not had any recent contact, while his father recovers from an operation. It turns out that another family in the same village are related to his mother, and that the children of this family are more or less at war with the children of Martin's hosts. There's a fine line to be trodden here, in making the reader sympathise with the 'right' children against the 'wrong' ones, without making the latter into monsters and the former just a little too good to be true - too tanned and energetic and resourceful. This works better with the 'good' family, who for all their healthy outdoor virtues and skills are real people, but the affluent Ollerford family are close to being caricatures. THey'd be at home in the background of a Jane Austen novel, I think, the mother always overwhelmed with the sheer effort of doing anything at all, the son an overindulged bully, the daughter pulled along in his wake, and the father absolved of responsibility for this mess because he is never home. Yet somehow all must be reconciled at the end of the story.
One final pleasure - Fidra have kept the original illustrations, by the author: the slightest of line drawings in which the children appear in silhouette, and I was astonished at how clearly I had remembered them. There is even - didn't I say it feels like reading a fantasy? - a map.
