(no subject)

[skygiants]

The Silence of Herondale is not particularly wild for a Joan Aiken gothic, but it has faint hints of future wildness to come!

Our Heroine Deborah has just been hired as a governess by a shady woman in a shady situation. Plot twist: her sweet young charge Carreen ... is a world-famous juvenile playwright who, at the age of thirteen, has staged four works on the West End!

Wearied by the exploitation of her youthful fame, Carreen runs away to visit her favorite uncle, picking up a hot but judgy long-lost cousin on the way. Deborah, who's been sent after her, accidentally gets there first and is in quick succession informed that:

a.) the uncle is dead under suspicious circumstances
b.) somebody needs to pet-sit his tetchy menagerie of animals and Deborah's been nominated
c.) if she doesn't handle the boiler just right while she's alone in the house, the building will definitely explode

This is the point where the Gothic got really Gothic for me - I can handle inheritance scandals and suspicious deaths, but emergency home repair is a horror I conscientiously arrange my life never to have to deal with on my own.

(Also I forgot to mention there's an escaped murderer on the loose.)

Eventually Carreen and the hot cousin arrive, and Deborah and the hot cousin immediately put on their Mutual Suspicion Hats, complemented by the hot cousin's Judgy About Home Repair necktie.

DEBORAH: [shows hot cousin a suspiciously cut rope in the pump room designed to send machinery plummeting onto somebody's head]
HOT COUSIN: I cannot? believe? you broke the pump?? now we're going to run out of water, the stove will probably explode -
DEBORAH: um did you miss the MURDER ATTEMPT?
HOT COUSIN: ... maybe.

Not top-tier Aiken, and I'm still fairly confused by what the villain's evil plan actually was, but a perfectly acceptable little emergency airplane Gothic.

Comments

[sovay]

and Deborah and the hot cousin immediately put on their Mutual Suspicion Hats, complemented by the hot cousin's Judgy About Home Repair necktie.

Can hot cousin handle a boiler? Otherwise he should take that necktie right off.

[skygiants]

Hot cousin CLAIMS to be able to handle a boiler but we see no direct evidence one way or another, all he does is hang around when Deborah is doing it and make scornful comments!

[shati]

(Also I forgot to mention there's an escaped murderer on the loose.)

>:(

[skygiants]

Thank you for the gift of the phrase that keeps on giving.

[aella_irene]

Does anyone you get super attached to die? I have been burnt by Joan Aiken.

[skygiants]

Not this time! Moderately sympathetic-in-theory characters die but since we never met them or saw them be sympathetic on the page it's hard to get too worked up about it.

[aella_irene]

I read it! I liked it! I think the evil plan was initially for Marion to inherit from her rich brother and continue exploiting Carreen, but then Carreen and hot cousin turned out to be the heirs and she adapted to murdering Carreen and hot cousin and blaming it on the local escaped murderer, despite his previous murder being one of horticultural passion.

Deborah was just hired because she had to have a tutor for Carree, and thought she might as well have one she could manipulate.

(Have you read Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart?)

[skygiants]

Like so many Gothic plans, it just seems so unnecessarily convoluted! I completely lost track of which murder attempts were really murder attempts, and which were murderer-related non-murder-attempt accidents that just happened to look like murder attempts.

(I haven't read it yet but it's for sure on my list of Stewarts to Investigate!)