Alone on an Island

You’d be surprised by how often all I want to read is a Robinsonade–and by how rarely I really enjoy one. Like, I’ve tried writing people surviving in the wilderness with limited resources, and it’s not that hard.

I don’t think W.H.G. Kingston, author of Alone on an Island, found it hard either–he seems to have written several and also taken credit for his wife’s translation of some of Jules Verne’s. Unfortunately his ease with the subject did not, at least in this case, produce a satisfying book.

Harry Gurton is a nice boy with religious inclinations, which will no doubt be useful to him when he’s alone of his desert island. First, though, we have to get him here.

Let’s start by killing off his parents–unnamed diseases, within a few months of each other. Then let’s commission him as a midshipman on a privateer. Let’s provide him with a pocket-sized bible and a warning about the immorality of sailors (they swear a lot) both courtesy of his friendly local minister. With all that taken care of, we can send him to sea.

Now we must make the ship as uncomfortable ass possible. Everyone swears a lot. The officers are relentlessly awful to the sailors. The surgeon leaves the ship after a difference of opinion with some of the officers, and Harry is the only person willing to nurse the sailors when they get sick. His fellow midshipman threatens to destroy his pocket bible. Harry tries to be friendly to everyone, but relations between the officers and the crew get worse and worse. So: it’s mutiny time.

One of the sailors he nursed through an illness lashes him to a mast to get him out of the way. Then the crew murders the rest of the officers. Then they give Harry the choice of becoming a mutineer or being marooned on a nearby island. He chooses the latter, as he’s uncomfortable with the murdering and the swearing. So his sailor friend assembles the world’s most comprehensive care package and puts him ashore.

The one thing I really want from a Robinsonade is the mechanics of survival, in exhaustive detail. How is the protagonist starting a fire? Building shelter? What do they eat? Are they identifying plants? Are they making tools to hunt with? I want to know everything. There should also be elements of struggle–to gather building materials, to search for a missing companion, to familiarize themselves with the collection of legal tomes that was washed ashore in a packing case. Whatever. Those being my priorities, reading Alone on an Island was a frustrating experience.

Harry has it too easy. He’s got guns and fishing equipment, tent canvas, vegetabl seeds and saucepans. He’s got several months’ worth of salt beef and pork. He’s happy to find eggs, not because he needs the food, but because they’ll be “a pleasant addition to his larder.” At some point he thinks to himself that he’d like a cup of tea, so he looks through his stuff and finds that his sailor friend has given him a big bag of tea and another of cocoa. There’s just something about about being able to make hot chocolate on a desert island that suggests Kingston is missing the point. Want to know how this lone fifteen-year-old builds a house? Well, so do I. All we get is “He began putting up his house. [Three sentences about hunting and fishing.] [Three sentences about the garden.] He had now got up his house.”

There are tantalizing glimpses of the kind of detail I want. Harry’s first effort at cooking fails, and he learns that it’s better to boil his salt beef than to roast it. He knows it’s going to be hard to grow things in the sandy soil, so he burns the weeds he’s pulled and uses the ashes as fertilizer. Gathering salt is a little difficult, but eventually he has enough to let him preserve some fish he’s caught. It’s easier to dry or smoke fish, but he prefers the salted fish. I think Kingston was capable of writing the kind of book I wanted. The real problem here is that he’s moving too fast.

Harry establishes himself with little effort and a fair amount of prayer, and then we skip forward three years to another shipwreck, which brings Harry’s sailor friend to live on the island with him. Then, after some bible-reading, we skip forward another couple of years, and the pair is rescued. The sailor becomes a missionary, Harry gets a job, the end. This is a really short book, and it feels like Kingston managed that by cutting out most of the parts I wanted to read.

So, here’s my verdict: Alone on an Island isn’t terrible, but it left my Robinsonade itch unscratched. I’ll try to report back with something more successful.

The Brightener

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to post about The Brightener. On one hand, this might be the wildest thing my pals A.M. and C.N. Williamson ever wrote. On the other, the fun will consist of recounting the plot in detail, and I usually try to avoid doing that. Still, I can’t not tell you about this book. One friend I told about it said, “I’ve been worrying about the plot of my book, but actually you can do anything.” Another said, “People really knew about PLOTS then.” My no-spoiler synopsis is: everything happens.

So, if you’d rather be surprised–repeatedly–stop here and go read the book. If you’re not worried about spoilers, sit down. Stay a while. I’m about to recap the first quarter of the book in absolutely bonkers detail.

First of all, there’s a princess. She was Elizabeth Courtenaye, but her grandmother married her off to an Italian prince who very promptly died. This is a favorite gambit of the Williamsons, who love a virgin with the rights of a widow. The grandma promptly dies, too, and Elizabeth is left with nothing but a title, a beautiful and historic estate in Devonshire, and her exceedingly good looks. Oh, and an enemy: a distant American cousin who used to be a cowboy and has red hair and black eyebrows.

On the advice of her lawyer’s wife, Elizabeth rents the estate to the cousin and becomes a “brightener”–a sort of professional society problem solver who can use her title and unimpeachably blue blood for the benefit of her clients–nouveaux riches trying to break into society, or American millionaires trying to marry members of it. Roger Fane is the latter, and he’s in love with Elizabeth’s friend Lady Shelagh Leigh. Her guardians don’t like him, so Elizabeth helps him organize a yacht trip that’s intended to soften them up.

Things take a turn for the weird almost immediately. An object floating in the sea near them turns out to be neither bird nor plane nor shark, but a coffin. They bring it on board, where it will hang out in Roger’s bathroom and make everyone super uncomfortable until they can hand it over to the authorities at the next port. The atmosphere is strained, and Elizabeth is pleased to be able to escape to her stateroom at the end of the day. That is, she would be pleased, if the room didn’t reek of brandy and there wasn’t a stranger in her bed.

On closer examination, Elizabeth recognizes the stranger as the German spy who tried to burn her house down a couple of years ago. I haven’t mentioned this incident because it’s not actually relevant. Linda the former German spy is here because she’s Roger’s wife who faked her death in a train crash years ago, and now that he’s a millionaire she’d like to come back to life and scotch his romance with Shelagh. So Elizabeth goes to find Roger, all, “Hey, awkward thing, your dead wife is in my cabin,” and then Linda the spy pops up behind her and says, “Not anymore, I’m not!” and Elizabeth throws up her hands and leaves them to it. After a while Roger shows up at Elizabeth’s door and he’s like, “So, super awkward thing: my dead wife is in my cabin and this time she’s actually dead.” Linda the spy has poisoned herself and framed Roger for her death.

Scandal and a murder charge seem inevitable, but then Elizabeth has a bright idea: why not put this inconvenient dead body in that very convenient coffin? Whoever’s in there can be thrown into the sea, and if they’re found, no one will think they have anything to do with Roger & Co., because they don’t. So Roger goes away to swap the corpses, but soon he’s back at Elizabeth’s door, because he needs to show her what was in the coffin. It’s not a corpse at all–it’s a pile of heirlooms that were stolen from Elizabeth’s estate. People suspected Elizabeth of stealing the things herself, for the insurance money, but having them show up in an unattended coffin enables her to instantly deduce who was really responsible.

Roger successfully disposes of his wife’s corpse and gets engaged to Shelagh, and as soon as the yacht trip is over, Elizabeth takes her heirlooms off to Devonshire to confront the thieves. This is, for various reasons, a bad idea, and Elizabeth lands herself in a scrape from which she has to be rescued by the cowboy cousin, who maybe isn’t so bad after all. Then she goes on to have several more adventures that strive to be as wild as this one, and almost manage it. I don’t know what else to say–or rather, if I try to say more I’ll end up recounting the rest of the plot. In sum: I recommend this book.

The Heather-Moon

So, hey. Remember me? Remember my favorite married co-writers Alice and Charlie Williamson? We’re back, with The Heather-Moon.

If you don’t remember, Charles Norris Williamson was an early motoring journalist, and he and his wife Alice Muriel wrote a number of novels together. About half of them were about attractive young people sightseeing in motorcars and falling in love with each other. Knowing this about them is more than usually important.

But first, our heroine: her name is Barribel MacDonald, she has a lot of very red hair, and she’s been brought up in seclusion by a strict grandmother. Barrie thinks her mother is dead, but when she finds out that she only ran away to be an actress, Barrie decides to run away, too, and meet her. She almost immediately runs into Ian Somerled, a very nice painter/architect/millionaire who knows that Barrie’s mother is the famous Barbara Ballantree MacDonald, or “Mrs. Bal,” and suspects that lady won’t be pleased to have a beautiful grown-up daughter on her hands.

Somerled brings Barrie to the house of his friend Mrs. Aline West, a famous author who co-writes novels with her brother, Basil Norman. They’re about to set off on a motor tour of Scotland in Somerled’s car, gathering material for their next book. Sound familiar? Aline is in love with Somerled–or whatever passes for love among villainesses–and dismayed to find that he expects to bring Barrie along on their tour–at least until they get to Edinburgh, where Mrs. Bal is starring in a new play.

Barrie and Somerled enthuse over Carlyle and Burns and fairies together, and fall in love. Aline and Basil fight over their book because Basil wants to make Barrie the heroine and also he writes all their best bits, but Aline is the boss of him–at which point I started asking, “Alice Williamson, what are you doing?”

I never got an answer, but I don’t mind, because this is classic Williamsons and I really do enjoy them. If you enjoyed Set in Silver you’ll enjoy this, too–it’s approximately the same book.

The Snowshoe Trail

I do love a good survival book, but The Snowshoe Trail, by Edison Marshall, isn’t one. It is, however, a) racist as fuck, b) action-packed, and c) substantially too long.

Bill Bronson is a fur trapper in, I think, present-day British Columbia. He’s hoping to someday find his father’s gold mine, and also take revenge on the man who killed his father and made off with the loose gold.

Virginia Tremont is a young woman from an unspecified US city. She and her guardian, Kenly Lounsbury, hire Bill to help them look for Harold Lounsbury, Kenly’s nephew and Virginia’s fiance. He disappeared after coming to this part of the world six years ago, so there’s not much hope, but Virginia hasn’t given up. Kenly Lounsbury’s motives are less clear. He’s financing the expedition, but it’s hard to imagine him caring about anything but his own consequence and comfort.

Bill falls in love with Virginia at first sight, but keeps it to himself. It’s pretty obvious that he approves of her sense and spirit, though, especially when the only others with them are the whiny Lounsbury, and the shifty cook, Vosper. Virginia appreciates Bill, too, and her steadfastness and appreciation of nature create a friendly bond between them.

Winter seems to be arriving in the mountains a little bit early, but they’re doing okay. And then disaster strikes–well, the first disaster, anyway. Bill and Virginia (brave, trying to do things) get swept into a river, while Lounsbury and Vosper (cowardly, lazy) hang back and watch. Bill (superhumanly, and not for the last time) manages to get himself and Virginia to the opposite shore, somewhere downstream. The other two pack up as soon as is seemly, leaving behind everything they don’t feel like carrying, and head back to civilization.

Bill and Virginia have ended up near one of the cabins that Bill maintains, and it’s well-stocked with supplies. The two of them have similar tastes, and with food, shelter, a stove and a phonograph, they get along pretty well. Bill teaches Virginia to shoot and snowshoe, she spontaneously learns to cook, and they wait for the river to freeze over.

And then–yes. Bill finds Harold Lounsbury. He’s fine. He didn’t go home because he didn’t care to. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s living with a native woman who seems to be largely without agency. The depiction of the First Nations people in this book is really, really bad, folks. Worth steering clear of the book for. The only part of Harold’s living arrangements that Edison Marshall doesn’t seem to disapprove of is the power imbalance.

Bill promised to bring Harold to Virginia, so he does, but none of the three are all that happy with the arrangement. Then: a food shortage. A bear attack. Bill goes blind. Harold hatches a plot with his native pals. Virginia gets shot. It’s exhausting. I kept thinking the book was over, and it wasn’t.

We do finally get an ending, and it’s fine, but by that time I didn’t care anymore. I think there are reasons you might want to read this book, but I can no longer remember them.

12th Blogiversary/Polly of Pebbly Pit

I read the first five books in Lillian Elizabeth Roy’s Polly Brewster series in 2007, right around when I started this blog. I had to stop there, because the sixth book wasn’t out of copyright yet, but since then, when I’ve thought about the public domain expanding in 2019, I’ve thought, “Oh, then I’ll be able to read the next Polly and Eleanor book.” 2019 felt really far away in 2007, but it’s finally here, so it feels appropriate to celebrate this blogiversary by revisiting this series.

This is making it sound like these books are really great, and if I recall correctly, they’re not. Polly of Pebbly Pit certainly isn’t, but it’s not bad, either–it’s just a decent girls’ series book for people who like girls’ series books, with an emphasis on sensible parenting and some mean-spirited comic relief.

Empty Hands

Robert Endicott, early in Arthur Stringer’s Empty Hands, compares his employee Shomer Grimshaw to a Diesel engine, efficient and emotionless, and wonders who would win out if Grimshaw had to deal with Endicott’s modern, spoiled daughter Claire. As a reader, you know what this signals: they will meet, and probably fall in love, and we’ll find out just how human Grimshaw can be. And I guess we do, but — and I suspect Stringer didn’t intend this — the answer is “not very.”

The Girl Crusoes

I don’t know how I feel about The Girl Crusoes (by Mrs. Herbert Strang, a pseudonym for the same two guys who wrote as Mr. Herbert Strang). I love a good survival story, which I think means this isn’t one. Also I wish people writing about castaways wouldn’t populate their tropical islands; so often it just seems like an excuse to be super racist.

Peter Ruff and The Double Four

I’m not going to write about all my recent E. Phillips Oppenheim reads–I’ve read about twenty of his books over the past month and a half, and that’s too many. But the more I read, the better a handle I get on him, and I’m finding most of his short story characters really enjoyable.

The Double Four seems to have been published before Peter Ruff, but Peter Ruff comes first chronologically. (You can find the two volumes in one here. I thought it was going to be a third Peter Ruff book, and was disappointed.) Peter is a nice young master criminal who falls in love with a young woman without anything in particular to recommend her. He’s trying to settle into a dull, middle-class lifestyle (to correspond with hers) when the police catch up with him and he has to leave his identity behind and create a new one. 

Tom Slade with the Flying Corps/Captain Blood Day 2017

Look, I know it’s Captain Blood Day, and really I should be posting about a Sabatini book, but…I think Sabatini would mostly approve of Tom Slade, seeing as many of his heroes are also a) cripplingly honorable and b) super awkward. Anyway, Happy Captain Blood Day! May we all be as ready with a good comeback as Peter Blood.

Tom Slade with the Flying Corps is, honestly, kind of amazing. It’s not perfect, but it’s clever and unexpected: a mostly-successful experiment.

Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer

So, Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer, is kind of great. It picks up some time after Tom Slade with the Boys Over There ends, and since we last saw him, Tom has become a motorcycle messenger.

There are no significant plot developments in this book–Tom is a very good dispatch bearer at the beginning and a very good dispatch bearer at the end–but it doesn’t need them. Instead we get some episodic adventures as Tom joins some of the fighting at the front lines, gets captured — sort of — along with a sniper, and races a ship to port on his motorcycle. He meets two old friends and impresses them both thoroughly, and one of his adventures is so genuinely tense that it was uncomfortable to read.

I feel like Percy Keese Fitzhugh was experimenting over the course of the WWI Tom Slade books, of which this is the last one. The first, Tom Slade with the Colors, is structured very much like the prewar books, and so is the second. But that one (Tom Slade on a Transport) end with a clear setup for the next book. And Tom Slade with the Boys Over There is self contained in a way none of the previous books have been. And then this one is, in a way, the most normal of them all — but that’s not normal for Fitzhugh, and I felt like there was an experimental quality to it.

Tom Slade with the Boys Over There

Tom Slade with the Boys Over There has a highly inaccurate title. He is “Over There,” but there’s only one other boy: Archibald Archer, who he met in Tom Slade with the Colors.

I’ve been kind of hesitant to spoil the plots of these, but I guess it doesn’t matter, so: this book starts just after Tom and Archer escape a German POW camp, and follows them on their journey through German territory.  Unsurprisingly, his boy scout skills come in handy traveling through the Black Forest.

It’s hard to know what to write about these books if I don’t want to recount the plots in detail, and I don’t. This book is a lot more coherent than any of the others I’ve read, because it’s really just recounting one adventure, and that’s nice. But it also gives a lot of page time to Archer, who isn’t all that interesting, and doesn’t appreciate Tom in a way that satisfies me. Or maybe it’s just that Tom is less single-handedly brilliant here. Which probably makes for a better, more balanced book, but doesn’t satisfy my heart’s apparently endless need for Tom Slade a) being amazing and b) not realizing how amazing he is, c) being initially underrated by others, and d) finally being appreciated as he deserves.

Tom Slade on a Transport

Tom Slade on a Transport feels like a do-over. Like, Tom Slade with the Colors was about Tom getting a job on a ship, and it was going to take him to Europe where he was presumably going to get more involved in the war. But then I guess Fitzhugh felt like he needed to get Tom back to Bridgeboro, for whatever reason.

In this book, Fitzhugh wastes no time in getting Tom on another ship, and one with a better mystery. One of the things I appreciate about Percy Keese Fitzhugh is that he does a really good job of adding emotional stakes to his mysteries. Here, it has the effect of changing Tom’s desire to fight from a patriotic one to an intensely personal one.

Anyway, this time Tom actually gets to Europe–and lands in grimmer circumstances than you really expect from a children’s book.

Tom Slade with the Colors

It wasn’t clear exactly how old Tom was in the first three books, but Tom Slade with the Colors brings us into World War I, and it’s suddenly relevant. So: he’s seventeen, and anxious to enlist in the army, but Mr. Ellsworth, the Bridgeboro troop’s scoutmaster, has made him promise not to lie about his age.

In typical Tom Slade fashion, he does something fairly heroic, acts like it’s no big deal and finds that everyone’s misunderstood his actions. So he comes up with another way to serve the war effort: working on a ship carrying…weapons, I think? Anyway he does some nifty detective work, makes friends with a Secret Service type, selflessly declines to get on a lifeboat, and, eventually, gets to have nice chat with the girl in his office who he doesn’t understand that he has a crush on.

I love one (1) boy scout.

Tom Slade on the River

Tom Slade on the River is set a year after Tom Slade at Temple Camp, but it feels like the second half of the same book, and only partly because it resolves a mystery that was set up in Temple Camp.

The first section combines most of my favorite things about Tom Slade. When the scouts arrive at Temple Camp and find a clue indicating that someone is injured and stranded on a mountain, Tom is the only one who immediately decides to try to find him. Everyone else just kind of accepts that something awful is happening, but for Tom it’s a matter of course that he has to at least try to do something.

Tom Slade at Temple Camp

I think I must have randomly come across Tom Slade at Temple Camp in a used bookstore when I was in high school. It was the first Percy Keese Fitzhugh book I read, and the one I’ve reread the most. So it’s hard to tell whether I think it’s good because it is good, or if I think it’s good because I love it.