The Moon-Spinners

This beautifully written, utterly charming romantic thriller kept my heart pounding in terrified suspense, even though my original copy of the book is falling apart because I’ve read the story so many times. When I was twelve or thirteen, Mary Stewart was a favorite author of everyone I knew who loved to read--my mother, her friends, me, and eventually my younger sisters--and of all Stewart’s books it was The Moon-Spinners that siren-called me back to its pages again and again.

Nicola Ferris is on holiday in Crete, surrounded by age-old ruins, sunny skies, and colorful wildflowers. While hiking among fragrant lemon groves on the craggy hills of the White Mountains, she impulsively follows the path of flying egret and runs into an show more Englishman who’s been shot, yet won’t tell her what happened and just wants her to go away and forget she ever saw him, though he obviously needs help. But as Nicola continues her vacation, enjoying the beautiful scenery and relaxing with her cousin, she can’t help noticing details that draw her back to the mystery and into danger.

I’m not normally a reader who enjoys a lot of description in books, but in The Moon-Spinners it’s so gorgeous and transporting I relish every word and image. While the story is set firmly and very compellingly in the all-too-real world, Stewart’s writing is laced with ancient myths and literary allusions.

The novel was written in the early 1960’s and Nicola shares some of the attitudes of that era, a time when men were leaders, male superiority was casually accepted by just about everyone, and the ideal for women was to be safely put up on a pedestal, but Nicola strains against those strictures too because she’s observant, quick-witted, and independent. It had been decades since my last reading, and delving back into The Moon-Spinners was like going on an archaeological dig through layers of my own worldview, helping me remember, even re-feel, some of my earliest understandings of life and love and the kind of person I wanted to be, since I was brought up surrounded by those early 60’s assumptions too, before everything started changing just a few years later in the decade. show less

A young woman arrives at a remote village in Crete a day ahead of schedule; she is not yet expected at the tiny just-opened hotel, and her travel companion won't arrive until tomorrow. This is a perfect set-up for a bit of suspenseful adventure, and that's what we get. Nikky hikes off the road into shepherd and windmill country, and what does she encounter but a gunshot Englishman and his knife-wielding Cretan guide hiding out in a hut. Does she run like crazy back to the village for help and safety? Nooooo....what kind of a story would that be? She insists on sticking around to help these suspicious characters, who could be up to damn near anything, none of it savory, and spends the night in the hut caring for the feverish injured hunk show more fellow while his companion strikes out for their boat to fetch supplies. The story continues in this incredibly unlikely fashion for around 200 pages, and it's just great Romantic fun, if you can hush up that bit of your brain that keeps saying "NO WAY" to all of it. Disney did grave damage to this story in its delightfully sanitized movie version, eliminating some characters, changing some of the good guys to bad guys, and turning the competent independent Nikky into Hayley Mills. What both book and movie have going for them is the breathtaking beauty of the Aegean...Mary Stewart regales us constantly with sea, sun, birds and flowers. I think that distracted me enough to allow me to buy into the whole escapade. That, and knowing that with Stewart things always work out in the end.
February 2017 show less

Mary Stewart always brings out the wanna-be traveler in me. I cannot think how anyone could read her gorgeous descriptions of the White Mountains of Crete and not be wishing to board the next plane out for Greece. Of course, one would hope not to encounter any of the diabolical characters she plants in the way of her heroine, but then it wouldn’t be a Mary Stewart novel if they weren’t there, would it?

I knew I was going to be in love with this novel when I read the opening paragraph.

I saw it straight away as the conventional herald of adventure, the white stag of the fairytale, which, bounding from the enchanted thicket, entices the prince away from his followers, and loses him in the forest where danger threatens with the dusk.

My show more mind threw back immediately to Arthur pursuing the white stag to find Excalibur in her masterpiece Merlin trilogy, and I settled down to love every word yet to come.

Who can resist a man in trouble? No Nicola Ferris, evidently, for despite the imminent danger, she links her fate with a wounded stranger she finds in the remote mountains of a Cretan village. Perhaps I have always loved Stewart so much because she paints the kind of witty, fearless, adventurous women that all young girls secretly long to be. I certainly did. Nancy Drew for a slightly older crowd? Whatever it is, I seem to sink into her world and never wish to exit until I have reached the last page, and I find them just as much fun at my advanced age as I did when I was in my teens and devouring them for the first time.

Lest you think Mary Stewart a simple, unsophisticated romance writer, allow me to assure you that she writes with wit, and with a knowledge base that shows at every turn. She brings her settings to life, she stirs in some mythology and classical references, and she gives you a bit of classic poetry to start off every chapter head.

They’re not fates, or anything terrible; they don’t affect the lives of men; all they have to do is see that the world gets its hours of darkness, and they do this by spinning the moon down out of the sky. Night after night, you can see the moon getting less and less, the ball of light waning, while it grows on the spidles of the maidens. Then, at length, the moon is gone, and the world has darkness, and rest, and the creatures of the hillsides are safe from the hunter and the tides are still...Then in the darkest night, the maidens take their spindles down to the sea, to wash their wool. And the wool slips from the spindles into the water, and unravels in long ripples of light from the shore to the horizon, rising above the sea, just a thin curved thread, reappearing in the sky.

I’m not sure I will ever look at the full or waning moon in the same light again. If that image doesn’t grab you, you have no romance in your soul, and this isn’t the author for you. If, like me, you would like to exercise your ability to suspend your disbelief and stroll in a land you might never see in reality and come away feeling you have been there and walked its streets...well, dive in...Mary Stewart and Crete are waiting. show less

I read, and enjoyed, this in print some years ago and this was a very good reading by Daphne Kouma. The story, first published in 1962, is now dated (but not yet historical) which often puts me off but not this time. The reading certainly added to the excitement, especially towards the end, and the narrator's voice suited the heroine - a 22 year-old middle class english woman, working in the British Embassy in Athens - and she was very good at the other characters' voices, too. There were a few odd pronunciations but nothing jarring.

Another thoroughly enjoyable Mary Stewart, as I work my way through a few of her novels. While I was convinced there was more to Mark than tourist in the wrong place, what I really enjoyed was the women, and mostly heroine Nicola, being smart and brave and tough. I've read far too many of ditzy females doing stupid things, Nicola was one to be reckoned with. The actual suspense plot got more than a bit muddled at times but the ending mostly pulled it all together in a satisfying way. A fun read.

I haven't read Mary Stewart in years. I was surprised by how suspenseful and scary it was. Lots of twists. I was expecting a gentler read, but enjoyed this none the less. Good narrator. Interesting characters. I'll pick up more after I get a chance to relax more.

I was happy to be able to enjoy this book again after reading it first almost half a century ago. It has stood the test of time pretty well. I was tickled to read little passages that were so important to many of us young girls at the time, particularly the author reinforcing the idea that women were not to be considered week, helpless and good for nothing much.

It was a battle for the heroine of the book Nicola Ferris to be taken seriously on the one hand, while on the other she was able to accomplish quite a bit just because she was underestimated as a woman!

I was not as impressed by the romance as I was on the initial reading. Nicola seemed a bit gullible and she wore her heart on her sleeve after meeting a poor sick and injured show more individual, Mark who was far from his best. Not that we were given much detail about Mark's character.

I will look forward to reading one or two more of these stories! show less