Having taken this out weeks ago I then procrastinated over actually reading it. What if it was really, really bad?

First thoughts

My very first thought was that I still did not like the cover, but I did appreciate the shiny gold details like the coins and the lettering, which don’t really show on pictures of it,

My second thought was A MAP!! Yes, there is a map of Kirrin in the front of the book. It doesn’t quite match my mental picture of the area, and there’s no coastguard’s cottage marked, but it’s nice to have all the same. To the west is Whispering Woods and I briefly wondered if we were visiting locations for Mystery to Solve, but that was Whispering Island, and I was therefore none the wiser.

The first page is very reminiscent of a Five adventure, with three children and a dog arriving at Kirrin Station on a steam train. There are also references to Sander’s Dairy which is nice. It is quickly made clear that this is the present day, however, and the steam train is some sort of heritage railway.

Despite being the present day, though, the three children have arrived alone and are to find their way to Kirrin Cottage with only the vaguest of instructions. They get a hint from an old man who gives boat tours – I suspected that this was James/Alf as he knows George and her island – but annoyingly he’s not seen or mentioned again.

George

I don’t know how I feel about the George we get in this book. The children find their way to Kirrin Cottage to find that George is not expecting them, and has no time for them. It appears that she has turned into her father. Cross, forgetful, impatient – oh and she’s a scientist too.

Even as someone who is absolutely turning into her mother (despite her best efforts) I wouldn’t have expected this of George. Yes she shared her fierce temper with her father and they could be alike slamming doors and scowling, she hated how bad-tempered he was. It’s a bit sad to see she turns out the same, even if she is nicer underneath than her first impression gives.

It was also sad to see her tell Maddie that Gilbert (the dog) had to stay outside at all times. Later in the book George goes on about how she can’t bear to see anyone mistreat an animal, and we all know how wild she was about Timmy. I could see George asking them to keep the dog out of her sight but not making him live outside just to protect her feelings.

The Story

I think the important thing to say here is that the book is actually two stories. First we have the children going to stay with George, and when she runs into trouble she starts to tell them a story about one of the Five’s adventures, and how it relates to the trouble they are in now. Back to the present day and they have a little adventure of their own.

Both stories were reasonably decent but the fact that there are two means neither was fully fleshed out.

The present-day story sees a man storming out of Kirrin Cottage, and later returning in the night to demand George give him her map. She does, and he tells her the house is being watched so she and the children can’t leave and stop him. This is slightly reminiscent of Julian, Dick, Anne and Joanna having to stay inside while the house is watched in Five Fall Into Adventure, but the solution this time is not a paper boy who is partial to chocolate mould. Instead they simply go down the secret passage from Uncle Quentin’s George’s study. This has a new exit – as George says, they can’t very well turn up in the back of someone’s wardrobe in the middle of the night.

Having escaped to the strange Whispering Woods on the map, they camp out and George tells them her story. It is nice that it starts in a similar way to the main story, with a steam train bringing Kirrin siblings into Kirrin Station.

Set 55 years ago – so 1970, which doesn’t fit with the time the book(s) were published, it’s not clear where this story would fit into the canon timeline. Anyway, the Five are at Kirrin and have a boy dumped on them as he is the son of an archeologist working in Whispering Woods. Strangely Uncle Quentin is all for an extra child around the place – but as he plans for the children to go camping on Kirrin Island an extra voice isn’t going to be bothering him. The boy – Roland – barely has a voice as he is a miserable, silent figure who derives no pleasure in Kirrin Island or anything it has to offer.

I have run completely out of time to write anything more this week, so instead of not posting anything I will post this part-review and do a part two next week.

The last point I want to make though is that although this is a flashback of George’s somehow she knows all the dialogue which happened even when she wasn’t present. It is also not written from the perspective of George retelling a story, as it says things like “The Five and Roland walked…”. I’m sure children won’t notice details like that, but these things annoy me. It was one of the things that annoyed me about Wuthering Heights (apart from the general misery and abuse throughout it) that Lockwood perfectly recounts Nelly Dean’s perfect accounts, which often contains a letter which perfectly recounts a conversation…

And that really is enough for tonight,