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!