Mary Stewart, The Moonspinners
Jun. 15th, 2005 08:22 amThis is the first novel of an omnibus collection of four that I picked up used a few years ago.
It's a thriller, I suppose, if you can have a thriller with a female protagonist, set in a remote village in Crete, though most of the cast are middle-class English persons. The landscapes are beautiful, sparkling with sun and flowers; the plot bubbles along nicely. It reminded me a little of John Buchan, but without the shadowy international conspiracies or the ancient evils, and a little of Daphne du Maurier, but without the crazy people.
The whole thing left me with a rather odd feeling. It was written in the 1960's, and it seems like another world altogether. Only ... I was born around then. Am I really a relic of such a different age? The world seems so innocent; no terrorism, no unease with the social order, no cold war paranoia, no drugs but casual and harmless cigarettes. I know, from history and dimly from my own early memories, that things weren't that simple in the real world, but for a while last night I felt old, lost in time.
It's a thriller, I suppose, if you can have a thriller with a female protagonist, set in a remote village in Crete, though most of the cast are middle-class English persons. The landscapes are beautiful, sparkling with sun and flowers; the plot bubbles along nicely. It reminded me a little of John Buchan, but without the shadowy international conspiracies or the ancient evils, and a little of Daphne du Maurier, but without the crazy people.
The whole thing left me with a rather odd feeling. It was written in the 1960's, and it seems like another world altogether. Only ... I was born around then. Am I really a relic of such a different age? The world seems so innocent; no terrorism, no unease with the social order, no cold war paranoia, no drugs but casual and harmless cigarettes. I know, from history and dimly from my own early memories, that things weren't that simple in the real world, but for a while last night I felt old, lost in time.
