Two by Mary Stewart

The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart

Perhaps - if you are of a certain age - you may recall the 1964 Disney movie of this name. The novel by British writer Mary Stewart was published in 1962. 

This lyrically written novel opens with Nicola ("Nikki") Ferris, an attractive young British woman employed as a secretary at the British Embassy in Athens, having arrived on the island of Crete - today a popular tourist destination but at the time of this novel's publication it was not yet developed as such. Therefore Nicola's arrival is viewed as somewhat of an intrusion by the island residents. She is there to spend a holiday with her Aunt Frances, a London botanist who wants to collect some of the island's native plants. 

Before meeting up with Frances - who is not due to arrive until the next day -  Nikki runs into trouble around which the story then unfolds. Up in the hills, away from town she encounters a young Englishman named Mark Langley who has been shot and whose condition is deteriorating while he is hiding in an old church. The church is being guarded by a Greek man simply called Lambis, who right away arouses suspicion. Despite that, Nikki's first and unrelenting instinct is to help her fellow Brit survive his assault, and she happens to have the necessary first aid skills and a brain for improvisation in a less than ideal setting for this kind of challenge. In doing so, she learns that Mark's teenage brother Colin was kidnapped in the assault on Mark, who now fears that Colin has been murdered. Once medically stable, Mark warns Nikki to go on with her vacation plans and forget ever having met him and Lambis. But of course she cannot. She becomes more deeply involved in an increasingly dangerous escapade that leads to a breathtaking conclusion.  

Nikki and Frances would likely have had the uncomplicated holiday they'd planned had she not encountered Mark and Lambis, or had she even heeded Mark's warning to stay away, but as it turns out, their lovely and simple lodgings and the genial and charming proprietor thereof unknowingly reveal a few sinister seeming clues that would have otherwise meant nothing to Nikki, drawing her back into a world of danger.  

In producing the Moon-Spinners film, Walt Disney took numerous liberties with Stewart's plot, simplifying it for young movie-goers of the 1960s and changing some of the characters' roles. So even if you saw the movie, the novel is well worth reading as it differs in so many ways from the Disney creation. Since I had seen the movie at age nine and had retained only a vague and enthralling impression of dazzling water, danger and suspense, and a plucky heroine played by a luminous young Hayley Mills - and the magic of the film's name itself - most of the characters and every turn of the plot were new to me.      

Stewart's gifts include an ability to create interesting problems, complex characters, compelling plots, evocative and even transportive descriptions of  unique and unspoiled places and cultures, and a skill for making a reader feel the physical sensations and emotions experienced by her characters. The Moon-Spinners enabled me to feel variously the island's cool sea breezes, the joy of exploring a new place, the sensation of a cool drink trickling down the throat at the end of a hot, adventurous afternoon, as well as the terror of being chased by a villain into a trap in the middle of the night. Meanwhile the complex plot is tightly constructed, with every detail explained plausibly.

It was pure coincidence that coworker Michael and I were both reading our first Mary Stewart novels at the same time. Feeling equally enthusiastic about this writer, a joint review of these two novels seemed called for. As for the title of this one, you will have to read the novel to learn its meaning. 

- Marianne W.

Thunder on the Right by Mary Stewart

My friend Maggie got this for me on a whim, thinking I'd appreciate the pulpy cover art and a mystery set in a remote convent. I brought it to work for my lunch break and Marianne said she was reading a Mary Stewart book, too! 

Our intrepid hero Jennifer leaves her cloistered home in England to visit her cousin in an actual cloister in the French Pyrenees. However, when she arrives she is told that her cousin is dead! The details don't add up, but trying to find out what is the truth leads her into a dangerous mystery. 

I found this to be a diverting romantic thriller. The writing drew me in quickly--there is some really beautiful description of nature, like this, when Jennifer first hears the bells of the convent: 

"She heard, floating out of the thyme-laden wind, the silver sound of a bell. She tilted her head to listen, smiling, her whole being pierced, rinsed through, tingling with a keen delight."

  Also, on the other end of the spectrum, humorous descriptions of English tourists, like here: "Miss Moon dug into her trout with the dogged efficiency and artistic appreciation of a bulldozer." 

Sensuality and celibacy are ever at odds in a convent story (I had Black Narcissus on mute while I finished this), and Stewart finds a way to show both the romance and the twisted through the story of a beautiful orphan being raised by the sisters. For romance, we have a fiery Spainard astride a sweaty stallion. On the twisted side, we have the convent's bursar Doña Francisca, a super fun character. The Mother Superior refuses to let her take the vow but she still dresses like a nun, only her black robes are silk and her crucifix is bejeweled. Immediately, Jennifer distrusts her. There is a fantastic description of Doña Francisca polishing candlesticks:

"The bursar, who sat above Celeste in what must be the priest's chair, was polishing one of the candlesticks from the altar, her long fingers loving each curve, as they caressed, rather than rubbed it, into brightness. But she was not watching what she was doing; her eyes were fixed on the down-bent head of the girl." 

Staring at the beautiful girl while positioned in the masculine seat of authority, practically masturbating a phallic object. "Maybe," Jennifer lamely posits later to Celeste, "She's trying to live through you?" 

Sure, Jennifer. 

This, and another element that is revealed later in the mystery, seem to be too risque or disturbing for Stewart to fully explore in 1957, but the undercurrents are still fascinating. 

-Michael G.

The Lion's Run by Sara Pennypacker

From a literary standpoint, our small library in Ferguson is not a sleepy place. In a steady stream throughout the year we add thousands of carefully chosen new books of every variety to our collection. Here is one that I immediately checked out for myself as soon as we acquired it last week; it looked so appealing. And what a story it tells! This novel - written as historical fiction for middle schoolers - grabbed me in the first words and drew me right into a tense and dangerous world: that of Nazi-occupied France in 1944. 

Thirteen-year-old Lucas Dubois - so named because he was found in the woods as an infant (dubois meaning "of the woods") - lives in an orphanage. Daily life is routine and tedious, everyone is always hungry, and a couple of the other boys are a constant menace to him. After he gets a job delivering produce to local institutions in his small French village, however, the quality of his life begins to change dramatically. The people this lonely boy encounters and the relationships he builds outside of the orphanage begin to elevate a life that had previously seemed to hold very little promise. 

The German occupiers in his village have imposed a suffocating stranglehold on everyday life. On his vegetable delivery rounds, Lucas begins to see things that disturb him. He sometimes hears secrets discussed among adults who don't always notice this quiet boy as he makes the daily deliveries. Before long, he has seen and heard enough to compel him to join the underground resistance to the Nazis. The more deeply this resourceful boy gets involved in subterfuge, the more dangerous life becomes.

The Lion's Run is categorized for readers aged 8 to 12. A good story is a good story however, and this suspenseful and beautifully written novel has a universal appeal not restricted to age. 

I have read many novels about the Second World War and I have hiked mountain trails on the French side of the German-French border, where some of that war's most vicious conflicts were carried out and where barbed wire, stone and iron remnants of it are still prominent along the mountain trails. In this novel I learned more than I ever knew about the Germans' systematically brutal and exploitive treatment of the French during that war. Moreover I found unsettling echoes of some of the worldwide threats on today's horizons: the rise of racial supremacy sentiments in both the US and Europe, fears about people's safety, the official aggressions, detainments and deportations of people the government deems undesirable, the increasing US use of government surveillance on citizens, and the race-based pronatalism expressed by white supremacists. There are echoes of The Handmaid's Tale in this novel, as the Germans under Hitler were indoctrinated that "boy babies are only future soldiers and girls are only future mothers of more soldiers." Therefore in order to replenish the German population, during this military occupation thousands of teenage French girls were systematically romanced and impregnated by German soldiers and then separated from their babies. 

In an echo of that human predicament, even the poor orphanage cat - "a good mouser" - was immediately, forlornly separated from the kittens she bore each year - though for the opposite purpose. I also learned things about horses I'd never known, and fell deeply for one particularly winning horse in this novel.

After extraordinary twists and turns, the book concludes with an ending that is triumphant for Lucas and sad for other characters. The story's end is a new beginning for him, leaving him with much more confidence in himself and his future. 

This is a book I didn't want to be done with. I want a sequel!

-Marianne W.