REVIEW: The Elbow Island Mystery
The Elbow Island Mystery: Ethel T. Wolverton, Hutchinson
This started promisingly. I liked the depiction of both family and friendship dynamics, and, of course, there’s a novelty to reading a mid-twentieth century girls own book set in the USA, but as the mystery/adventure plot kicked in and through the middle bit, the characters resolutely ignored the highly suspicious character, refusing to entertain suspicions about his suspicious behaviour, instead getting eaten up by doubts about others and made miserable by the tensions they caused, it got frustrating and a less gripping read.
The heroine is Alison Webb, around sixteen, a sturdy, tomboyish sort, who has an inferiority complex about her sister Connie, seven years older, recently graduated from university and lauded for it. Best friends with Tony Perry (a girl) and Greg Atwood, she’s working on painting their jointly owned rowing boat, The Valiant, with the aim of going out on Wedge lake, where the titular island is found. It is owned by Alison’s Great Aunt Lucia, who has just retired from being a professor of botany and is proposing to go live in her dead father’s house on the island with Connie, where they will undertake botanical experiments. All well and good, except for Alison’s gnawing discontent that she’ll never be as brilliant or admired as Connie an that Greg and Tony think she’s the drudge, while they come up with the ideas.
Now, all this seems to suggest that Alison is an unappealing main character, but Wolverston manages to keep us sympathetic of Alison, partly because when she forgets her grumbles and interacts naturally with her family and friends, she’s a pleasant girl. She adores her father Byron, and only loves her mother Evelyn. The latter urges her to befriend Eloise Brand, a motherless girl of her own age who Alison and Tony don’t think much of. Tony is living with the Webbs because her mother is in hospital, facing operations for an unspecified complaint, but because this is happening in the US, Tony’s father is worrying about the bills, and in need of a contract that the town board, of which Mr. Webb is a leading light, is set to award.
What Alison doesn’t quite perceive is that she’s in a fortunate position, both her parents are alive and in good health - Greg only has his mother, while Eloise is living with her grandmother, although her father is alive. Mr Webb, able to send his eldest to university, is a well-respected pillar of the community, until things start to go wrong.
This shades the kids’ summer job of helping Aunt Lucia, Connie and Smudge the dog to move over to the isolated house on the island named for its shape, and to help get the house and garden in tiptop shape. Difficulties arise when Mr Murney, the relatively new owner of the property on the shore of the lake, argues over their mooring the boat there and Lucia’s right of way across his land. Nancy Drew would take one look at him and find him highly suspicious, but nobody else does.
It all comes to a head on one stormy night, when the kids, who all have different clues as to the mystery, act a little recklessly - although they will all get recognised for their courage -and solve it, after putting various adults through the wringer. Alison particularly proves herself, and finds out that everyone always thought rather highly of her for her good qualities anyway. Over the course of the summer, she grows up a little and becomes more appreciative of what she has.
As I’ve said, it started off engagingly, but became less so as it went on.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/190776.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
This started promisingly. I liked the depiction of both family and friendship dynamics, and, of course, there’s a novelty to reading a mid-twentieth century girls own book set in the USA, but as the mystery/adventure plot kicked in and through the middle bit, the characters resolutely ignored the highly suspicious character, refusing to entertain suspicions about his suspicious behaviour, instead getting eaten up by doubts about others and made miserable by the tensions they caused, it got frustrating and a less gripping read.
The heroine is Alison Webb, around sixteen, a sturdy, tomboyish sort, who has an inferiority complex about her sister Connie, seven years older, recently graduated from university and lauded for it. Best friends with Tony Perry (a girl) and Greg Atwood, she’s working on painting their jointly owned rowing boat, The Valiant, with the aim of going out on Wedge lake, where the titular island is found. It is owned by Alison’s Great Aunt Lucia, who has just retired from being a professor of botany and is proposing to go live in her dead father’s house on the island with Connie, where they will undertake botanical experiments. All well and good, except for Alison’s gnawing discontent that she’ll never be as brilliant or admired as Connie an that Greg and Tony think she’s the drudge, while they come up with the ideas.
Now, all this seems to suggest that Alison is an unappealing main character, but Wolverston manages to keep us sympathetic of Alison, partly because when she forgets her grumbles and interacts naturally with her family and friends, she’s a pleasant girl. She adores her father Byron, and only loves her mother Evelyn. The latter urges her to befriend Eloise Brand, a motherless girl of her own age who Alison and Tony don’t think much of. Tony is living with the Webbs because her mother is in hospital, facing operations for an unspecified complaint, but because this is happening in the US, Tony’s father is worrying about the bills, and in need of a contract that the town board, of which Mr. Webb is a leading light, is set to award.
What Alison doesn’t quite perceive is that she’s in a fortunate position, both her parents are alive and in good health - Greg only has his mother, while Eloise is living with her grandmother, although her father is alive. Mr Webb, able to send his eldest to university, is a well-respected pillar of the community, until things start to go wrong.
This shades the kids’ summer job of helping Aunt Lucia, Connie and Smudge the dog to move over to the isolated house on the island named for its shape, and to help get the house and garden in tiptop shape. Difficulties arise when Mr Murney, the relatively new owner of the property on the shore of the lake, argues over their mooring the boat there and Lucia’s right of way across his land. Nancy Drew would take one look at him and find him highly suspicious, but nobody else does.
It all comes to a head on one stormy night, when the kids, who all have different clues as to the mystery, act a little recklessly - although they will all get recognised for their courage -and solve it, after putting various adults through the wringer. Alison particularly proves herself, and finds out that everyone always thought rather highly of her for her good qualities anyway. Over the course of the summer, she grows up a little and becomes more appreciative of what she has.
As I’ve said, it started off engagingly, but became less so as it went on.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/190776.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.