sawyl | Over Sea, Under Stone (Reply)

For no good reason, other than a sudden attack of nostalgia induced by a chance remark over Easter, I've just re-read an old favourite, Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone.

The Drews have travelled down to Trewissick to holiday with their Great Uncle Merry. Exploring the sprawling Cornish house Merry has rented, the children, Simon, Jane and Barney, happen across an old scroll with a map on it and decide to follow the instructions. When Jane accidentally lets slip some information about the map to a stranger, the house is burgled and the children realise that they need to confide in Uncle Merry.

Once apprised of the existence of the map, Merry warns the children that they are in danger from sinister forces, some of whom they've already met. He tells them that he is fully engaged in drawing their enemies away from them and that it will be up to them to decypher the map and find out where it leads.

This is the first time I've read Over Sea for something like 20 years. I was surprised — although perhaps I shouldn't have been — by how well it had stood the test of time. The quest was still exciting and the setting timeless. In fact, the only things that really point up the age of the book are the lack of a television in the Grey House and the lack of vast numbers of tourists in Trewissick!

I also found that the encounters with Mr. Hastings had lost none of their edge over the years. The moment when he appears on the tor in the middle of the night is, quite frankly, terrifying. I'm not quite sure why they bother me so much, but I suspect it has something to do with the gothic vulnerability of the children. For although they're given a great deal of independence, they're still living at a time when most adults would be unlikely to believe the story of a child over that of another adult, making them almost totally vulnerable to anything that Mr and Miss Withers or Hastings might claim.

Now, having established that the first novel has lost nothing in my estimation, I think I'm going to go on to read the rest of The Dark is Rising novels.