(no subject)

sovay described the plot of The Mysterious Mr. Ross to me a couple months ago when we were talking about unusual kid's books of our childhoods, and then rachelmanija wrote it up; both times I was intrigued, but the book is not available in either library system to which I belong. However, I recently discovered, it is available online through the Internet Archive's library service (scanned, ironically enough, from a BPL copy that does not appear to be available anymore) so now I have read it!

The plot: twelve-year-old Felicity, whose irritable mother owns her seaside town's local B&B (and whose father has been for some time out of work), goes out to the dangerous bit of the shore when she's not supposed to, and ends up rescuing a young man from the current.

The next day, the young man -- now comfortably settled at the B&B for recovery, his papers and identification having been all, tragically, washed away -- introduces himself as Mr. Albert Ross and begins ingratiating himself with Felicity's family and the townfolk, helped along somewhat by Felicity's own inflation of his story in a tempting fit of drama.

Some people, including Felicity's friend Bony, soon become suspicious of the stranger in their midst and his conveniently missing documentation and cheerfully helpless reliance on the townsfolk. Felicity's own suspicions vacillate back and forth in proportion to her desire to feel heroic, and her sense of responsibility towards both the mysterious Mr. Ross and the community to which she's brought him home; if Mr. Ross is not an unmixed good, then what does that mean for her, and her role in saving him?

Felicity is the kind of imaginative, selfish, intensely relatable preteen protagonist that I loved at the age of twelve and still love today. I suspect, at the age of twelve, I would have found the story's numerous loose ends and disinterest in solving the mystery of Mr. Ross frustrating; as an adult, I find it intriguing. I never read Vivien Alcock's books growing up and that definitely appears to have been an oversight.