Night Fall
by Joan Aiken
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Haunted by a recurrent nightmare, a young English girl travels to Cornwall to trace the source of the dream.Tags
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Voices by Joan Aiken
by bookel
Member Reviews
Although I enjoyed this story for once I felt the author could have done more to add substance to it. The "mystery" is barely laid out before it is solved and the suspense aspect of the novel is resolved way too quickly. I feel like it failed to live up to it's potential.
Plus a half star. Never really gets into full stride so doesn't quite manage to make the unbelievable believable. Almost a long short story and the writing is crafted beautifully. After reading a number of overly long books the economy of this one was a pleasure and I love the way she shows us character and intention without telling us directly as so many otherwise interesting writers seem to irritate me by doing.
Plus a half star. Never really gets into full stride so doesn't quite manage to make the unbelievable believable. Almost a long short story and the writing is crafted beautifully. After reading a number of overly long books the economy of this one was a pleasure and I love the way she shows us character and intention without telling us directly as so many otherwise interesting writers seem to irritate me by doing.
Haunted by a recurrent nightmare, a young English girl travels to Cornwall to trace the source of the dream.
I really liked this book when I was junior high.
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Edgar Award
418 works; 15 members
Author Information
215+ Works 19,781 Members
Joan Delano Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex, England, on September 4, 1924, the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winner, writer Conrad Aiken. She was raised in a rural area and home schooled by her mother until the age 12. She then attended Wychwood School, a boarding school in Oxford. Her work first appeared in 1941 when the British Broadcasting show more Corporation, where she worked as a librarian, broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour program. Aiken also worked at St. Thomas's Hospital, and in 1943 she moved to the reference department of the London office of the United Nations, where she collected information about resistance movements. She worked for the UN until 1949, all the while continuing to write stories. In 1953 a collection of short fiction called All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories was published. While writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, begun in 1952, her husband became ill and died of lung cancer in 1955. After working for five years as a copy editor at Argosy Magazine, and at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Firm, she returned and finished the book in 1963. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was made into a successful film in 1988. In 1969 The Whispering Mountain won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972, Night Fall won America's Edgar Allen Poe Award for juvenile mystery. Aiken is best known for her adult "fantasy" stories. She has received awards for children's fiction and for mystery fiction, and has also written ''sequels'' to Jane Austen books. She collaborated with her daughter to write many episodes of her Arabel and Mortimer the raven series for the BBC. In all, Aiken wrote 92 novels - including 27 for adults - as well as plays, poems and short stories, although she was best known as a writer of children's stories. Joan Aiken died in January of 2004 at the age of 79. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Heyne Allgemeine Reihe (01/6766 / 01/9602)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Night Fall
- Original title
- Night Fall
- Alternate titles*
- Die Lady aus Cornwall
- Original publication date
- 1969
- People/Characters
- Meg
- Important places
- Cornwall, England, UK; London, England, UK
- First words
- The day I met George was one of the worst days of my life.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Hoisting Hodge firmly into my arms, I went into the pub, my mind already at work on the long and difficult task of composing a letter to George.
- Original language
- English UK
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 122
- Popularity
- 265,979
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.10)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 9
