RAVENSGILL

by William Mayne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 1970

When it is all over, it doesn't matter, the forty year old rupture would have healed itself: in effect, Mr. Mayne has his mysterious scandal and eats it too, consumes it, confirming his people in possession of the scene. At Vendale a household with members -- Judith, Mick a year older, sixteen, their parents, Gran, old Wig; at Ravensgill nearby in Yorkshire, acolytes -- Bob, Dick, old Tot who like Wig 'does for' -- and ""the Gypsy Queen,"" their erratic grandmother. When suddenly letters pass between Wig and Tot, and between the two old women, Bob's and Judith's questions are turned aside. Mick knows something, it is in his determination to beat out Bob in the school swimming trials. Curious, cautious, Judith begins to see. . . but Bob, seeking himself too, seeks out the story, unreasonably, fixedly. In a brilliant Alice-in-Wonderland episode -- three solemn little monsters, an enigmatic Lord, a baby handed round, a game of French cricket -- he locates the widow of the constable who investigated the case, whose death, confided in the letters, is an ostensible reprieve for Lizzie, his grandmother (who may or may not have sprung the murderer of her father, Gran's uncle); but ""The officer makes a note in his book, and that's all; the person looked at often remembers it all his life."" Bob, unknowing, has already relived part of the story in plummeting through the cascades into the tunnel under the hill -- into a semblance of blindness and a deadlier darkness ""that left him with no view of the world""; then, reassured that life is inside him, he looks for a way out. In time all will be revealed and laid to rest; but after more than forty years Lizzie, exonerated, and her cousin Maggie ""don't agree any more."" Thus, laconically, the end -- and not the end -- of characters in flux and very much in place.

Pub Date: Oct. 9, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION