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osprey_archer) wrote2025-06-19 08:08 am
osprey_archer) wrote2025-06-19 08:08 am
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Book Review: The Witch of Clatteringshaws
Joan Aiken’s pacing may have bobbled in some of her later books, but it’s full speed ahead in The Witch of Clatteringshaws, which she raced to get done with the literal deadline of her own encroaching demise.
She has a lot of loose ends to wrap up in this book, chief among them the question of who will be the next King of England. Simon is currently saddled with the job, but he doesn’t want it, because all he wants to do is live a quiet life communing with animals and painting, and also he would like to marry Dido who has very definitively stated that she is unwilling to be queen.
It’s not entirely clear to me if she’d like to marry Simon, but she’s a good bro who doesn’t want to see Simon stuck on the throne, so she heads off to the north to chase up the only lead they’ve got on a possible alternative king. Apparently there’s an Aelfric somewhere up in Caledonia with a claim to the throne?
Spoilers: we never find Aelfric. From beginning to end we have no idea who this man is. Like the thought speech, which was so important in the Is books and never appears again, this one of many loose ends Joan has decided she doesn’t have time to bother with. As she finished this book a scant four months before her death, that’s fair enough.
Instead, Dido finds a Dickensian old person’s home (and let’s pause to admire Aiken’s breadth of Dickensian vision: Dickensian orphanages, Dickensian schools, Dickensian mines, apparently Dickensian mills in Midnight Is a Place which we haven’t read yet, and now Dickensian retirement homes). And at this home there is a boy, an orphan foundling who has been raised as a drudge, even though he arrived at the door wrapped in a cloth emblazoned with a golden crown…
The boy is Fred, which we tried valiantly to make a derivative of Aelfric (maybe we misread Aelfred? No. Aelfric). And anyway he couldn’t have been the one sending conspiratorial letters in the last book, as he can neither write. And he’s too scared of heights and the dark to join Dido and her friend Piers in crossing the rail bridge to visit the Witch of Clatteringshaws…
littlerhymes and I agreed that Fred seemed a nice enough boy but perhaps not quite the stuff one wants in the ruler of a country beset by savage wolves and also an invasion by the Wends.
But fortunately, in the very last chapter, Piers receives a letter from his parents, which reveals… they are not his parents! He is the heir to the English throne, as can be clearly seen by this genealogical chart, and also a glance at his mismatched eyes, which only occur in the line of the Tudor-Stuarts!
So Simon is free to become an artist! And Dido can marry him without becoming queen! Still unclear if Dido and Simon will marry, which is nice as I really in my heart believe that Dido’s true bride is Adventure.
But perhaps after a decade or two more Adventure, Dido will be happy to settle down with Simon in some nice bohemian artists’ colony, preferably close to Simon’s sister Sophie and her beloved Podge (also an artist). Is and Arun can perhaps visit from time to time. Penelope would be welcome but probably prefers to remain in the woods making little stuffed toys. Happiness for everyone, and every once in a while Dido will thwart an evil plot and rescue a few downtrodden orphans and/or old people just for old time’s sake.
She has a lot of loose ends to wrap up in this book, chief among them the question of who will be the next King of England. Simon is currently saddled with the job, but he doesn’t want it, because all he wants to do is live a quiet life communing with animals and painting, and also he would like to marry Dido who has very definitively stated that she is unwilling to be queen.
It’s not entirely clear to me if she’d like to marry Simon, but she’s a good bro who doesn’t want to see Simon stuck on the throne, so she heads off to the north to chase up the only lead they’ve got on a possible alternative king. Apparently there’s an Aelfric somewhere up in Caledonia with a claim to the throne?
Spoilers: we never find Aelfric. From beginning to end we have no idea who this man is. Like the thought speech, which was so important in the Is books and never appears again, this one of many loose ends Joan has decided she doesn’t have time to bother with. As she finished this book a scant four months before her death, that’s fair enough.
Instead, Dido finds a Dickensian old person’s home (and let’s pause to admire Aiken’s breadth of Dickensian vision: Dickensian orphanages, Dickensian schools, Dickensian mines, apparently Dickensian mills in Midnight Is a Place which we haven’t read yet, and now Dickensian retirement homes). And at this home there is a boy, an orphan foundling who has been raised as a drudge, even though he arrived at the door wrapped in a cloth emblazoned with a golden crown…
The boy is Fred, which we tried valiantly to make a derivative of Aelfric (maybe we misread Aelfred? No. Aelfric). And anyway he couldn’t have been the one sending conspiratorial letters in the last book, as he can neither write. And he’s too scared of heights and the dark to join Dido and her friend Piers in crossing the rail bridge to visit the Witch of Clatteringshaws…
littlerhymes and I agreed that Fred seemed a nice enough boy but perhaps not quite the stuff one wants in the ruler of a country beset by savage wolves and also an invasion by the Wends. But fortunately, in the very last chapter, Piers receives a letter from his parents, which reveals… they are not his parents! He is the heir to the English throne, as can be clearly seen by this genealogical chart, and also a glance at his mismatched eyes, which only occur in the line of the Tudor-Stuarts!
So Simon is free to become an artist! And Dido can marry him without becoming queen! Still unclear if Dido and Simon will marry, which is nice as I really in my heart believe that Dido’s true bride is Adventure.
But perhaps after a decade or two more Adventure, Dido will be happy to settle down with Simon in some nice bohemian artists’ colony, preferably close to Simon’s sister Sophie and her beloved Podge (also an artist). Is and Arun can perhaps visit from time to time. Penelope would be welcome but probably prefers to remain in the woods making little stuffed toys. Happiness for everyone, and every once in a while Dido will thwart an evil plot and rescue a few downtrodden orphans and/or old people just for old time’s sake.
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May they live happily ever after! I would like Dido to have more adventures, but perhaps in future they can be less traumatising, and with regular mealtimes.
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I enjoyed your review so much I had to go back and see what you’d thought of the previous Joan Aiken books! I loved the first ones as a kid, didn’t find the rest until much later (though I was a bit obsessed with A Necklace of Raindrops, partly due to the Jan Pienkowski illustrations. The library copy was all black and white, so I was incredibly excited as a young adult to find an edition where some of the internal art was full color! ::swoon::).