Book Review: Over Sea, Under Stone

[osprey_archer]

The young reader works in mysterious ways. Even though I loved Susan Cooper’s The Boggart and King of Shadows, and even though we had a box set of The Dark Is Rising for my entire childhood—and even though I first started my Newbery project when I was eleven, and the fourth book won a Newbery Award!—I didn’t read The Dark Is Rising quintet until after college.

Now littlerhymes and I are rereading it together, starting of course with Over Sea, Under Stone. My recollection is that this book has a very different feel from the rest of the series—not that the rest of the series is all of a piece, either; I’ve always found that interesting about it, that the books should feel so different from each other, it really feels like it just grew.

This one has that very distinctive mid-twentieth century British children’s adventure story feel, like Arthur Ransome, only with some magic coming at the end. Simon, Jane, and Barney are on holiday in Cornwall, staying in a big old house that their parents have rented. They decide to play explorers, and in the process of exploring they stumble upon a strange old map, covered with writing in a language they don’t recognize…

Fortunately their Great Uncle Merry is an Indiana Jones type, a professor who is always dashing about the globe finding treasure, and translating the strange script on the map is a mere bagatelle for him. And it turns out that the map leads to the Holy Grail, which Great Uncle Merry has been looking for himself. But so have his enemies (enemies of the Grail itself), who have been following Great Uncle Merry in hopes that he’ll lead them to it, and now that the children have found the map, Great Uncle Merry takes it upon himself to try to lead these enemies astray so the children will have a free hand to search…

It’s often a difficulty in children’s adventure stories to get the adults out of the way so the children can take a central part in the action, and this particular excuse in Over Sea, Under Stone has always seemed a bit thin to me. Of course it ends up with the children in great danger.

In general I feel this book, indeed the whole series, is best read not for the plot (which often doesn’t make a lot of sense) but for the atmosphere: the fascinating old house with its nautical theme, the Cornish coast in the moonlight, the children clambering around the headland on the seaweed-clogged rocks at the lowest tide of the year; the search through the cave for the Grail, with only a box of damp matches and a soggy candle to light the way.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

Oh, wow, I read Susan Cooper's books in the other order -- my mom read the Dark is Rising series first, and then I think she moved on to the Boggart as something that Susan Cooper had written more recently (it had only been out for a couple years then). I remember being super excited when The Boggart and the Monster and King of Shadows came out and appeared on library shelves!

[landofnowhere]

Oh, and I remember discovering Seaward after I moved up to the YA section -- have you read that one? I've only read it once but remember liking it.

[osprey_archer]

I haven't read Seaward! Maybe after I finish this Dark Is Rising reread.

[rachelmanija]

It my favorite book of hers.

[osprey_archer]

I think that order is more common! But somehow or other I just never got around to The Dark Is Rising even though it was RIGHT THERE on the bookshelf.

I remember being quite disappointed by The Boggart and the Monster, which may not have been fair. Perhaps at some point I should reread it. Loved King of Shadows, though!

[kore]

I read Dark is Rising first, as a library rec probably, and then I couldn't get the other volumes I think? So I read it over and over again, and when I finally got to the other volumes I was a bit ehhh. I only read Greenwitch for the _first_ time a few years ago! (I liked it.)

[osprey_archer]

Oh that's rough! Did the library just not have the other volumes? It seems weird that they would have only one book in such a popular series, but sometimes the ways of libraries are mysterious.

[kore]

Yeah, this was the Santa Fe Public Library in the early eighties, so it was kind of poor. Or maybe they did and I can't remember--

[sholio]

I mentioned this when I did my write-ups for these books, but I legit had NO idea this was the first one in the series because it wasn't in my '80s version boxed set, which starts with Dark Is Rising! It was really interesting to read it as an adult. I did enjoy it even coming to it for the first time, but I very much could tell that I would've been ALLLLL over the treasure map/searching element (even more than I am now) if I'd encountered this book at exactly the right age.

I think this is the only book in the series, too, that explicitly spells out Merry = Merlin. As an adult I am pretty sure I would've picked up on it by the end of the series through contextual clues, but as a kid reading it without much knowledge of the Arthur mythos, I very much did not.

[osprey_archer]

I remain fascinated by the box set that simply left out Over Sea, Under Stone. It sort of makes sense, because the other books are more like The Dark Is Rising than Over Sea, Under Stone, so it sort of gives you a better idea what you're getting into... but also it must be very strange when Simon and Jane and Barney pop up in Greenwitch, and it seems clear that you're supposed to remember them from somewhere, except that book wasn't in the set so you don't.

[skygiants]

Honestly I think in retrospect so much of the series rests on vibes all the way through -- the vibes are different in different books, but it's the atmosphere that makes it all land.

[osprey_archer]

I really wish I'd read it as a child because I would LOVE to know if I would have been swept away by the vibes, or censorious about the nonsense plotting. Probably depends exactly what age tbh. I think at ten the vibes would have got me, but if I had been a teenager probably I would have scoffed, especially if I'd already started reading the kind of internet reviews that lean really heavily on pointing out plot holes. There was one particular website that reviewed TV shows... the name escapes me now... anyway it was years before I grasped that plot holes were not in fact a fatal sin against story, just a particular bugbear of that particular set of reviewers.

[littlerhymes]

The plot bits are not nearly as memorable as the vibes. They are on an ADVENTURE! They are in DANGER!

[osprey_archer]

They are in DANGER in the STANDING STONES in the MOONLIGHT, hard to get more intense vibes than that!

[nnozomi]

I'm always sorry that a lot of people seem to think Over Sea, Under Stone isn't as good as the rest of the series--I read it along with the other books as a kid and found it wonderful. Parts of it are seriously TERRIFYING--without all that much detail she's so good at bringing out a true sense of evil in the bad-guy characters, something that sets it apart from the non-magical mid-century kids' adventure books for me (not putting down Arthur Ransome or Antonia Forest or anyone else, of course). And as you say, the atmosphere and the places throughout are absorbing.

[osprey_archer]

It's very different from the others! I can see how someone who was really into the more epic/mythical elements of the rest of the books might not like this one as much, just because it's such a different kind of book. But I've always really liked mid-20th-century children's fantasies and been a bit hit or miss with the more mythical fantasies, so this was actually my favorite on my first read-through of the series... will be curious if that changes this time around.

[asakiyume]

Wow, this sounds good! I read The Dark Is Rising and then was terribly disappointed when I went to try Over Sea, Under Stone because it *was* so different. I abandoned the attempt (I was very young). I should try again!

[osprey_archer]

It's SO different from The Dark Is Rising. I bet a lot of young readers were disappointed when they moved from one book to the other (in either direction) and realized that the tones are so wildly divergent. But I'd be interested to hear what you think if you do read it now!

[duskpeterson]

My least favorite of the series, not because of the plot but because I've always found those three kids to be rather bland. Within the context of the series, though, it's well worth reading.

[osprey_archer]

Apparently there was a particular box set that omitted Over Sea, Under Stone, and I'm just fascinated what it's like reading the series without the book at all. Greenwitch has to be a bizarre experience, because it so plainly assumes that you have a prior acquaintance with the Drew children!

[duskpeterson]

I read the books out of order: The Grey King (that was an interesting introduction to the series), The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, and then Over Sea, Under Stone. (Silver on the Tree wasn't published yet.) You're right: it's very difficult to make sense of Greenwitch without Over Sea. But it does give you some sense of Will's perspective, coming into the middle of all this.