(no subject)

[skygiants]

I have a huge weakness for seventies Gothic novels in yellowing paperback, and it turns out genarti's family's cottage has PILES of them. I grabbed the shortest-looking one this time around, since I wanted to make sure I'd have time to finish it before we headed home. This turned out to be Mary Stewart's Thunder on the Right, aka the ONE WITH ALL THE NUNS.

...OK there is only about two actual nuns in it, and they're not very important, and then one semi-evil fake nun who swoops around dressed like a fifteenth-century Spanish noblewoman and exuding predatory lesbian subtext. But she's NOT A REAL NUN! Mary Stewart wants to assure us of this! She's just a bitter nun wannabe who also serves as convent bursar and evil interior decorator.

The actual plot of Thunder on the Right is -- well, there's not very much of it; a sheltered young lady decides to drop in on the convent to try and talk her favorite cousin out of joining up. Alas, when she arrives, it turns out her cousin is TRAGICALLY DEAD! ... or IS SHE?? Something sinister about that fake nun convent bursar and evil interior decorator suggests otherwise!

Meanwhile, our heroine's long-lost Sensitive Musician crush is hanging around perennially disappointed because he keeps thinking she's running dramatically into his arms to MAKE OUT! and in fact she's just really stressed out by the whole dead-or-maybe-missing-cousin issue and would like a hug and some friendly support. This happens multiple times and every time it triggers at least a page of hilariously angsty internal monologue. Man, I love Gothic novels.

I mean, this is not really a particularly memorable Gothic novel, and does not rank high in even the limited Mary Stewart pantheon that I've read, but as yellowed-paperback-lakeside-vacation-reading it serves exactly the proper function.

PS: Thanks everyone who weighed in on my post about links! I'm going with Goodreads for now as the most useful suggestion for serving the desired functions of a.) having lots of other opinions besides mine, b.) offering non-Amazon links to buy the book from, and c.) being something I can do relatively consistently for old and new books alike, even though it probably still puts money in Amazon pockets but YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING.

Comments

[sovay]

I mean, this is not really a particularly memorable Gothic novel, and does not rank high in even the limited Mary Stewart pantheon that I've read, but as yellowed-paperback-lakeside-vacation-reading it serves exactly the proper function.

Yep! It is not even the best Mary Stewart Gothic, which is probably Nine Coaches Waiting (1958).* But even mediocre Mary Stewart is excellent vacation reading.

Which of her novels have you read besides this one and Touch Not the Cat?

* It has a governess! And a manor house! And an underage heir! And some uncles! And an Englishman abroad who seems to have wandered in from the Drones Club, which is unfair, except that in his introductory scene he talks non-stop at the narrator about conifer diseases and I thought of Gussie Fink-Nottle at once. Anyway, the rest of it is very Gothic. And French.

[skygiants]

I think The Ivy Tree is the only other one! I should read more Mary Stewart gothics. Barbara Michaels was taking precedence for a time because the NYPL had SO MANY ebooks of hers. Apparently there's also a Tempest one? I feel I should read the Tempest one.

[sovay]

Apparently there's also a Tempest one? I feel I should read the Tempest one.

The Tempest one is This Rough Magic (1964) and it is one of my favorites; it occasioned one of my first instances of fancasting, although I have since been informed that Stewart almost certainly had someone else in mind for the part. Other favorites of mine include Madam, Will You Talk? (1954), My Brother Michael (1959), The Moon-Spinners (1964), and Airs Above the Ground (1965). After that, with the exception of the telepathic WTFery of Touch Not the Cat (1976), I kind of lose interest and drift off toward her Arthurian novels. I've read all her books except the rare novella The Wind Off the Small Isles (1968). Most of her romances don't actually work for me as romances, but that's very rarely what I read for anyway.

[antisoppist]

My mother had all of them and my sisters and I used to test each other on the names of the ostensibly evil bloke who turns out to be good after all and the kind supportive bloke who turns out to be evil in the end. We were slightly concerned that little sister's favourite was the one set on Skye where the chap murders people who Attempt To Conquer The Mountain because The Mountain is A God and He is Its Servant. My favourite was Touch Not the Cat because as a teenager I thought of all the romantic heroes on offer in Mary Stewart, I'd take the one who could read your mind and cook dinner and mend broken things because that would all be quite useful.

[sovay]

We were slightly concerned that little sister's favourite was the one set on Skye where the chap murders people who Attempt To Conquer The Mountain because The Mountain is A God and He is Its Servant.

Oh, man, is that Wildfire at Midnight? I barely remember that one. I can see I will have to re-read it.

My favourite was Touch Not the Cat because as a teenager I thought of all the romantic heroes on offer in Mary Stewart, I'd take the one who could read your mind and cook dinner and mend broken things because that would all be quite useful.

I can't really argue with that! I liked it because of the telepathy, which in middle and early high school I didn't even think to question; I was reading a lot of Anne McCaffrey and Andre Norton anyway. It was only on a much later re-read that the paranormal element struck me as a really weird thing to include in an otherwise straightforward suspense-romance even in 1976, whereupon I liked it for that reason as well.

[genarti]

I love Airs Above the Ground enormously; that and Nine Coaches Waiting are probably my favorite Mary Stewarts. The prominent role of Lipizzaner stallions is admittedly a significant part of the appeal, but I also really like Vanessa. And her mumbling teenage sidekick whose name I've forgotten.

I really should reread This Rough Magic. I've only read it once, at which point I was a teenager and I did like it, but I couldn't quite forgive it its lack of airy sprites and ambiguously magical numinousness; I wanted it to be a different genre than it is. I ought to reread it for the book it actually is.

[sovay]

The prominent role of Lipizzaner stallions is admittedly a significant part of the appeal, but I also really like Vanessa. And her mumbling teenage sidekick whose name I've forgotten.

Timothy! Who gets a snarky epigraph from Shakespeare in the chapter he's introduced in, but is a completely reasonable teenager. I agree with you about Vanessa. Some of Stewart's narrators feel transparent; she doesn't. (Neither does the narrator of This Rough Magic, which is one of the reasons I like it.)

It always surprised me that more of her novels weren't made into movies; this one feels like it should have been a natural. She even got the permission of the then-director of the Spanish Riding School, who I did not realize for years was as famous as he was. The one time in my life I saw Lipizzaners perform, I thought of Airs Above the Ground.

I ought to reread it for the book it actually is.

I'm really fond of the book it actually is, which is much more about theater people and Greek islands than it is about retelling The Tempest, even though it does kind of work as such—cut with occasional other Shakespeare because everyone in the novel thinks that way. It's a page and a half, but I have always loved the scene in which Phyllida and Julian Gale dissect what went wrong with the play she was just in, which folded, because it has nothing to do with the romance plot or the suspense plot or the ongoing appreciation of the natural beauty of Corfu, it's just two people in the same business talking shop, which happens.

I just discovered this fancasting (in the first review) and I rather like it. My personal Sir Julian Gale was always Derek Jacobi, and I've heard arguments for John Gielgud, but I approve of anything that would have given Ralph Richardson more good parts onscreen. He did low-key quotidian numinous very well, too. He could give the sense that magic might happen at any moment, even if it never did.

[skygiants]

I tried Mary Stewart's Arthuriana, but those books never quite clicked for me -- I don't think she's particularly interested in most of the bits of the mythos that I'm most interested in, and so we drift past each other in the night. (Also she's not batshit enough. By this point I expect my Arthuriana to either focus on the things I want it to focus on or to be batshit, but The Crystal Caves are not either. :() I put off reading her Gothics for ages on account of that, but they seem to work for me much better!

[sovay]

I tried Mary Stewart's Arthuriana, but those books never quite clicked for me -- I don't think she's particularly interested in most of the bits of the mythos that I'm most interested in, and so we drift past each other in the night.

I imprinted on The Crystal Cave in seventh grade; I think it was the first Arthurian retelling I'd read that resonated so strongly with me. It still does, even now that I can look at it critically. I should figure out sometime what I took from her as a writer, because I can't imagine there aren't echoes. It's easier for me to trace influences starting in high school, because I became aware of my own models then, but I started writing as soon as I could hold a pencil (and then much faster as soon as I could type); it's not like the early stuff isn't in there somewhere.

Speaking of batshit Arthuriana, have I recommended you Phyllis Ann Karr's The Idylls of the Queen (1982)? It's a seven-year-old post, so the style makes me twitch with refusing to self-edit, but I stand by my liking for the novel and the reasons for it. It remains one of my favorite Arthurian novels and the only one I know that's a police procedural.

I put off reading her Gothics for ages on account of that, but they seem to work for me much better!

I'm really glad to hear it. I'm not sure of the genre of the ones that aren't Gothics—they were always called "novels of romantic suspense" in the jacket copy—but I recommend them, too. Sort of obviously.

[skygiants]

Oh man, I have been wanting to read Idylls of the Queen FOREVER, but I can never seem to find it! Sir Kay is one of my secret Arthurian favorites -- actually, what I've seen about Idylls of the Queen makes it seem like it gets closest to the deeply competent and sarcastic and messed-up Sir Kay that's always been in my head (and also in my Arthuriana plucky-crossdressing-insert-character trunk novel that will probably never see the light of day), even though I've no idea where I got that version of Sir Kay from from because I've not yet read Idylls and as far as I can tell or remember nobody else has done him that way. But somebody must have, I must have got him from somewhere!

[sovay]

Oh man, I have been wanting to read Idylls of the Queen FOREVER, but I can never seem to find it!

If I see it again in a used book store, I'll buy it for you.

the deeply competent and sarcastic and messed-up Sir Kay that's always been in my head

He's very clearly Karr's favorite. I have a very odd Arthurian novel of hers called The Follies of Sir Harald (2001), set in a Chrétien de Troyes-inspired Camelot and starring the hard-luck knight Harald de Folgeste; Kay turns up as a minor character and walks off with all of his scenes. I don't object to this. One of the novel's adventures also features a cross-dressing Jewish woman named Deborah. She's going by "David ap Gwilliam" when we meet her.

But somebody must have, I must have got him from somewhere!

Why shouldn't you have thought of him yourself?

Aaargh, where the hell is my copy of Naomi Mitchison's To the Chapel Perilous (1955)? I haven't seen it since New Haven, I can't imagine I lent it to anyone and didn't ask for it back, my copy is the only one I've ever seen. It's stupidly out of print. You want Arthurian batshit, you want that book.

[skygiants]

I've never even heard of Follies of Sir Harald but apparently it also needs to go on my list! I've never actually read any of Deborah Ann Kerr's books, Idylls of the Queen has just been hanging on the edges of my range of vision and taunting me.

I suppose I could've thought of him for myself, it just seems peculiar to me that Deborah Ann Kerr and I got mostly the same fanon out of the sea of cameos of unpleasantness that is Sir Kay's representation otherwise. I feel there ought to be a traceable literary descent somewhere, like the Scarlet Pimpernel to Peter Wimsey.

Apparently I do want To the Chapel Perilous!

[sovay]

I've never actually read any of Deborah Ann Kerr's books, Idylls of the Queen has just been hanging on the edges of my range of vision and taunting me.

I've read two of her non-Arthurian fantasies, Frostflower and Thorn (1980) and Frostflower and Windbourne (1982), about which I can remember almost nothing except the premise of the first novel, because it's great: Thorn is a pregnant mercenary trying to decide whether it's better to risk being out of work for months carrying the child to term or risk her life using the services of a back-alley abortionist, Frostflower is a sorceress looking for a child to raise—sorceri in this world are a little like Shakers: pacificist, virgin, living in communities of their own and using their feared time-manipulating powers for peaceable purposes like agriculture—the two of them strike a bargain and after that get stuck together with the baby in a weird combination of road trip, heroic quest, and platonic life buddies. I remember the culture as being vaguely feudal and vaguely post-apocalyptic, with a caste of farmer-priests laying down the law, but I really would have to re-read to check. I can't remember a thing about the second novel, I'm afraid. I hope it was good.

I feel there ought to be a traceable literary descent somewhere, like the Scarlet Pimpernel to Peter Wimsey.

I suppose. But unless you can find it, or unless it turns out you really ran across The Idylls of the Queen as a very small child, it sounds like parallel evolution to me.

Apparently I do want To the Chapel Perilous!

You do! It has Arthurian journalists!

[greenygal]

I am dropping by this discussion two years later--a sudden flood of Mary Stewart in ebook inspired me to check her tag--to say that my formational encounter with Kay was Karr's "Two Bits of Embroidery", a short story in the 1988 anthology INVITATION TO CAMELOT. So perhaps you also read the story. And if you haven't, now you know it exists! (It contrasts Elaine and Lancelot with a scullery maid with a crush on Kay; Kay does not reciprocate but is nice about it, and the scullery maid becomes a lady-in-waiting rather than dying tragically.)