As I was working both Monday and Tuesday evening this week I felt like I didn’t want to start the next Famous Five book (Finniston Farm) on Sunday evening. Instead I suggested we try a Famous Five short story so we could finish it it one night.
I have the 1996 Red Fox paperback, the first time ever that all the stories had been gathered together in one volume, and it lives on one of Brodie’s bookshelves as there is no room on mine beside the hardbacks. You can just see it on the top shelf, the last book on the right.
For information on where these stories were first published see my series synopses – part one and part two. I have also reviewed the audio versions of these stories but focussed mostly on the voice acting and not the plots – part one and part two.
Despite those posts I’ve not really reviewed it in full. Reading it aloud made me notice a whole lot of things which I want to write down, and of course I have Brodie’s comments too, so I’ll include those as I go along.
An immediate adventure
Being a short story there is no time to waste on preliminary scene-setting. It begins with the girl already in bed at Kirrin Cottage, and by page 2 George sees a light on her island. “The adventure is beginning already,” Brodie said excitedly.
Of course George is furious and determined to set off right away, just as she was when Anne thought that she saw a light on Kirrin Island in the middle of the night in Five Have Plenty of Fun.
Five Have Plenty of Fun (1955)
George sat up in her chair as if she had had an electric shock. “On Kirrin Island! Whatever do you mean? Nobody’s there. Nobody’s allowed there!”
“Well—I may have been mistaken,” said Anne. “I was so very sleepy. I didn’t hear the motor-boat go away. I just went back to bed.”
“You might have waked me, if you thought you saw a light on my island,” said George. “You really might!”
…
“If the boat’s ready, we’ll certainly go over to Kirrin Island today,” said George. “If any trippers are there I’ll send Timmy after them!”
Five Have a Puzzling Time (1960)
‘Anne! Quick, wake up! ANNE! Come and see! There’s a light shining out on Kirrin Island, a light, I tell you! Somebody’s there—on MY island! Anne, come and see!’
Anne sat up sleepily. ‘What’s the matter, George? What did you say?’
‘I said there’s a light on Kirrin Island! Somebody must be there—without permission too! I’ll get my boat and row out right now!’
George was very angry indeed, and Timmy gave a little growl. He would most certainly deal with whoever it was on the island!
The first investigation
As George has to go to the dentist (she was awake because of toothache) she can’t go to the island that morning. By page eight, the others have decided to go by themselves and find nobody there, but one of Anne’s sandals disappears when she takes them off for a paddle.
When George returns she insists that she and Timmy go as Timmy will obviously succeed where the cousins failed.
This, unfortunately became the beginning of a lot of repetitiveness in the story. It is only 46 pages long and they spend around 19 of those pages searching the island for the maker of the mysterious light.
On the first visit they sensibly they rule out anyone’s presence as there’s no boat, but Julian, Anne and Dick have a good look around anyway.
This only lasts a few pages and yet there are at least three inconsistencies with the rest of the series. Blyton wasn’t above making mistakes across the series, like having a room whole then the roof falling in then it being whole again, but three in almost as many pages is fairly poor. Five Go to Demon’s Rocks was published the year after this story, and I don’t think it shares the same faults, so I’m not sure we can put it down to the onset of her dementia. Perhaps the short story format made her rush?
Anyway, the inconsistencies are:
The jackdaws came down from the tower, and chacked loudly round them in a very friendly manner. Some of them flew down to the children’s feet, and walked about as tame as hens in a farm yard.
The jackdaws have always been very flighty, and were a sign that anyone had walked near them if they flew into the air. They do fly into the air soon after this and Julian asks what startled them. There’s no suggestion in any other book that the jackdaws know the Five and are so tame around them.
We’ll go up the old broken-down tower steps as far as we can, shall we? We might see something there—perhaps a lantern.
But in Five on a Treasure Island it’s established that you couldn’t do any such thing.
‘Was there an upstairs to the castle, George?’
‘Of course,’ said George. ‘But the steps that led up are gone. Look! You can see part of an upstairs room there, by the jackdaw tower. You can’t get up to it, though, because I’ve tried. I nearly broke my neck trying to get up. The stones crumble away so.’
And the Anne says;
What a lovely little island this is—and how lucky George is to own it. I wish I had an island belonging to my family, that I could call my own.
Obviously quite forgetting that George has shared her island with her cousins and says it belongs to all of them now.
The mystery deepens
In the brief interlude between visits to the islands (for lunch, of course) the Kirrin Cottage cook has reverted to being Joan rather than Joanna – except for one time where George calls her Joan. Interestingly the Faded Page version has it as Joanna each time – although they often admit to making “corrections” as they digitise it.
That’s not the real mystery, though. Joan/na is demanding to know where her oranges and grapes have gone, and Timmy’s dog biscuits. Then George noticies some chocolates missing from a box.
There has been a thief at Kirrin Cottage and Timmy didn’t notice!?
Back to the island
Another search of the island and the repetition really begins.
Naturally George wants to check for a boat as well.
George circled it deftly in the boat, being anxious herself to see that no one had hidden a boat anywhere. She pointed to where a great mass of brown seaweed had piled up on the west shore.
‘See what the wind did when we had that terrific gale on Tuesday—brought in masses of seaweed again! Now we’ll have an awful smell when it dries out!
Despite having hidden their own boat with seaweed twice, none of them wonder if the trespasser has done the same, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps the piles weren’t quite boat-sized.
The jackdaws fly off again, perhaps startled by someone, again.
In new content Anne finds some orange peel and a grape pip, asking ‘Does that ring a bell, anyone?’ Brodie, excitedly, shouted “Yes, yes it does, Joanna’s oranges and grapes!”
Julian does what I’m beginning to notice he does second best (after being bossy) which is to instantly and incorrectly dismiss the others’ ideas, this one being that someone stole fruit from Kirrin Cottage and brought it to the island.
However, the find of the dog biscuits proves Dick was right.
Timmy, sadly, is fairly useless, as he picks up several trails and loses them – the longest one ending at the seaweed. (Mind you, it makes me wonder why he didn’t find the entrance to Uncle Quentin’s workroom in Kirrin Island Again, I suppose Uncle Q might have crisscrossed the island, but his strongest scent should have led right to the fireplace!) This made the search feel rather repetitive and hopeless.
The Five sit down and the overly tame jackdaws visit them again, along with the rabbits this time. As they are distracted by a rabbit which has been pecked by a jackdaw they fail to notice their biscuits and chocolate being stolen. Apparently even Timmy didn’t hear a thing. I find that really hard to believe, that anyone could walk up right behind them and take their things without Timmy noticing. He follows the trail again, but loses it at a tree.
The next bit of poor continuity is actually in Demon’s Rocks as the Five entirely fail to remember/mention the boy with the monkey who predates Tinker and his monkey by a year! Perhaps Bobby and Chippy inspired Tinker and Mischief as she realised a monkey would be amusing alongside Timmy – though of course Miranda and Looney had already been causing hilarity for over ten years.
Thankfully there are no more trails just a monkey to follow, and he leads them to his owner and his dog who are, hardly surprising, under the seaweed.
The ending
In my opinion the ending dragged on for far too long. Given that the story is 46 pages long, and they find the culprit on around page 30, there really was no need to take 15 pages – nearly a third of the book – to round it off. It felt like the end of the final Lord of the Rings film!
Bobby has run away because his Granpop said he’d have Chummy (the dog) put down a he bit someone. They take him back to Kirrin Cottage where (after some debate) he is allowed to stay the night, and he is firmly told by the Five that he has to train Chummy properly if he cares about him. A valid point and important lesson – but it needn’t have taken 15 pages and so much talking.
Five really do have a puzzling time
Aside from the number of times ‘following the trail’ and similar variations on the phrase were used, and the dozens of times the word seaweed appeared, the Five were also extremely puzzled.
‘Well—we’ll walk round the island and examine the rocks sticking up here and there,’ said Dick, puzzled about the jackdaws, too.
‘Of course!’ said Julian. ‘This is a puzzle! What do we do next?’
Why? George was puzzled.
‘Nor did Tim—or he would have barked,’ said George, really puzzled.
Timmy was already sniffing, looking very puzzled indeed.
‘Well, let’s hunt round a bit again,’ said Julian, more puzzled than ever.
‘Of course!’ said Julian. ‘This is a puzzle! What do we do next?’
They sat sucking the barley sugars, really puzzled.
Timmy was as puzzled as the children.
Final thoughts
Brodie listened pretty intently to the adventurous parts but he definitely got a bit restless once Bobby was found and it became a bit boring. I asked him if he enjoyed it and he said no, he couldn’t bear it not having any chapters. As a single story it is probably about two or three regular chapters long, so not too bad to read in one go, assuming one third of it doesn’t drag.
I thought the basic premise wasn’t bad – but it could have been a much shorter, tighter story. We didn’t need George to have a sore tooth, and the cousins to go first, thus exploring the island twice. We didn’t need so much toing and froing with poorly excused uselessness from Timmy. Yes the seaweed smell would have made it harder for them to find the trespassers but not to the extent of the trouble they had!
Aside from that, the idea that Bobby floated to the island on an air bed with a spade for an oar, rather stretched plausibility. We are told over and over that it is very hard to land on Kirrin Island. The local fishermen can manage it, and obviously the baddies do a few times, but a young boy on an air bed? Obviously George’s pride over her special ability to be the ‘only one’ to land on her island is exaggerated by her, but come on.
Sadly the illustrations in the Red Fox edition are poor – or at least poorly printed with very dashed lines. Brodie was horrified! I explained that it was a different illustrator and he wanted to know why Enid Blyton hadn’t drawn them this time…
It wasn’t all bad, though. The characters were well written, as they always are, George was perfectly George-ish in her fury at someone being on her island, and although it was a short story there was some nice moments like below.
‘Cheer up. We’ll all go and hunt over the island again this afternoon—and I expect you’ll find a couple of pirates, two or three robbers, a shipwrecked sailor, a …’
George gave a sudden grin. ‘Shut up, you idiot. Don’t take any notice of me for a bit. I’ll be all right soon.’
Fiona
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