Five Get Into a Fix

It had been ages since I read a Famous Five book, and I found this one at the book crossing and read it quickly.

The children have been ill, and so are sent away to Wales to recuperate, but find themselves drawn into a mystery of a strange, locked up building with grumpy guards.

I was sort of hoping from the blurb for more ski-ing and winter fun, of which there is not actually that much, but there is good solid Famous Five adventuring to make up for it.

I can never tell how much children had so much more freedom in those days, and how much the stories in books are just stories that didn't reflect any actual reality. But the fact that the four children get packed off to stay with a friend of a friend, and then end up living on their own, show more halfway up a welsh mountain, with the snows falling and only just coming out of a bad infection, is sort of terrifying to me as a grown up. Also it is very hard not to read 'George smiled, pleased to be addressed as a boy' through a modern lens of gender dysphoria! show less

Brief Summary by Poppy Hutchinson (from http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/): Recovering from coughs and colds, the children are prescribed a holiday in the Welsh mountains. Days of tobogganing, skating and snowmen lie ahead, but the children soon become distracted by a mysterious local building called Old Towers. Having seen 'shimmerings', and vans visiting the place in the dead of the night: surely there is something strange going on? When the Five go to stay in a Chalet near Old Towers they discover some breath-taking secrets involving the atmospheric building.


Random thoughts:

I liked the beginning, with the children crankily recovering from colds and coughing a lot. It was a beginning that did not seem a repetition of earlier ones, show more which is good considering that we are in book 17 and that the formula requires that the children go on holidays in all the books, preferably on their own.

However, isn't it weird that parents would send their children, just recovering from bad colds and still coughing, to spend their holidays in the snow? I know fresh air was prescribed for a number of illnesses, particularly those that required long, debilitating home internment. Still, maybe this air was a bit too fresh for coughing children.

By the way, this time the children are at Julian, Dick and Anne's house, not at Kirrin cottage. We do not really see much of their parents, though.

Anyway, they go to the mountains in Wales. Which is a nice change of pace from the usual moors or coastal areas, and still provides a lovely natural landscape.

Morgan was certainly a memorable character, with that booming voice and his laconic manners. I love it that Enid Blyton does a "Mr Penruthlan" on us with him. He seems guilty but he is not. The pattern of obvious criminals at the very beginning of the series is over. At this point we do not know the guilty party as soon as we meet it. Suspicious characters may turn out to be innocent, and that's for the better. If mysteries are obvious they are not very mysterious.

On the other hand, that mysterious magnetic metal is cringe-worthy. It causes such a strong magnetic field that cars and bikes become difficult or impossible to use (WTF?). To say nothing of its other weird properties, like the glows it creates all over the mountain. Enid Blyton's stories have never been famous for their realistic portrayal and understanding of science, but here we get into ridiculousness.

For once, Timmy did not seem a force of nature. To be fair, it would be too much to expect a single dog to hold its own against several of Morgan's dogs, but George was a bit over-the-top in her protectiveness. In other books, dogs were introduced to each other by their owners to show they were not enemies, but here they fight and it's an unsolvable problem (although later, when the dogs meet again at the end of the book, their fighting seems forgotten).

All is well, though, because it leads to a very nice trip though the snowy mountain, and the children staying on their own at a lovely mountain chalet that was usually only used in the summer. Have I mentioned that I love the scenery here? We had lots of snow in Go Adventuring Again, but the children didn't get to enjoy it much.

Aily is another of those wild, ragamuffin child characters Enid Blyton likes. I liked her too! This one got herself attached to Julian, and played a central role in the adventure, even though she did not speak much English.

There's one point, when Aily is all terrified of being"scolded" by her mother for running around without ever going home, and the Five are all sorry she is going to be "told off"... surely that's an edit, right? I bet that in the original her mother was going to beat her, because otherwise everyone's reaction makes little sense.

The pre-adventure part is really enjoyable, and the adventure is very nice too, intriguing, mysterious and atmospheric as the best of the series. It did have a problem, though: in the end, the children were not the heroes of the story. They did not defeat the bad guys. That role was reserved for Morgan. Still, in such a long series, we can afford an adventure where our heroes do not save the day. Their heroic status is not diminished. Besides, that did not result in our being cheated of the adventure. The Five lived an intense adventure even if in the final fight they didn't get the main role.

I really enjoyed this one. For all that it has some serious problems (the laughable secret metal, the children not being the ones to defeat the bad guys...), those flaws are such that they do not seriously impair the enjoyment of the story. The ingredients that makes these stories enjoyable are here.


Next up: Five On Finniston Farm show less

O meu irmão, que enveredara pela idade do armário, namorava uma moça que decidiu fazer de mim um juvenil. No Natal de 76 recebi deles uma prenda decepcionante:
— Um... livro?! — balbuciei.
— É dos Cinco — disse ela. E sorrindo perguntou — conheces?
— Não.
— É para leres, ouviste! — disse o autoritário do meu irmão.
Fiquei aflito. Abri o livro e em quase 100 folhas voando debaixo do meu polegar não vi senão meia dúzia de ilustrações. Era palavreado a mais. Com tão poucos bonecos eu não ia conseguir perceber a história sem ler. Como sabia que eles me perguntariam algo sobre o livro, não tinha remédio senão ler aquilo.
— Leio um bocadinho por dia — pensei — se me perguntarem, não há muito a dizer.
show more No dia de Natal li o primeiro capítulo (e aprendi que o livro se dividia em capítulos).
— Então, gostas do livro?
— É. Já li um capítulo.
Durante quatro dias a cena foi a mesma. Eu aflito e eles percebendo...
No dia a seguir, que era quarta-feira, os Cinco salvaram o tio e... eu. Fora uma fabulosa aventura por passagens secretas no castelo da ilha Kirrin. Os espiões foram presos e o tio Alberto fez grandes descobertas científicas. E eu tinha acabado o livro!
Quando o meu irmão chegou do namoro perguntei-lhe se a namorada tinha muitos livros dos Cinco.
— Eu peço-lhe para ela te emprestar os dela — e sorriu.

Bic Laranja, 8 de Agosto de 2005.
(http://biclaranja.blogs.sapo.pt/192439.html) show less

Much like The Famous Five in this book, I was at home ill when I first read this novel. I remember though that despite having a slight fever and feeling in the worst state, that I was simply unable to put this book down, which should be no surprise since it is a very good read.

Perhaps it's that strong impression that this novel had on me. Or it's startling resemblance in style and content to three of the Blyton Adventure novels (love those) - "Castle of Adventure," "Island of Adventure" and "Mountain of Adventure." But this, the seventeenth in the series, is my all-time favorite of the series.

After a couple of disappointing books, this adventure seems to breathe new life into the series. Indeed it reads much more similar to the show more Adventure series of novels. There's also a change in locale for the book opens not in the familiar Kirrin, but instead towards the end of the Christmas holidays in the home of Julian, Dick and Anne. Soon though the group are sent to stay with the gardener's aunt (a Mrs. Jones) who rents rooms in Magga Glen in the Welsh mountain's in the hopes that the fresh sir will do the children good.

Persuading Mrs. Jones to let them stay in a mountainside chalet rather than at her farm, the Five begin to experience strange goings-on. There are underground rumblings and an eerie shimmering in the air. They also meet a young rascal of a girl in Aily (who bares a remarkable likeness to Tassie from "Castle of Adventure") and her dog Dai and lamb Fany.

Of course, one staple element in the Famous Five novels is complete without the presence of some secret tunnels and this novel is no exception. Aily shows them the passageways into a mysterious house with a tower (more shades of "Castle of Adventure") and also gives them a note she found that reveals that the woman they saw earlier in a window of the tower is being held prisoner.

That begins an entertaining series of adventures into the house and deep underground which will keep the reader engrossed. The novel itself, as with all the Famous Five adventures, is very "kid-safe" and easy to recommend.

The Famous Five novels by Enid Blyton are a British institution in the United Kingdom and occupy a place in the bookshelves of nearly every self-respecting pre-teen. When I was growing up in the UK I devoured all the Blyton books I could get a hold of and then went onto her Secret Seven and (my all-time favorite) Adventure series.

The format for the books is essentially the same - a band of children (on this case the Famous Five - Julian, Dick, Anne, George, and her dog Tim) get into a series of adventures thwarting criminals and solving mysteries. It's like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but imbued with that classic British idiom and that fast-paced, expertly crafted Blyton style that give it an edge over her American counterparts.

The success of the formula is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the majority of the Blyton books I read were handed down to me from my mother who had received them as a child herself in the 1940s and 1950s. It's an unusual feeling opening a book and seeing it inscribed to a parent when they were your age. There are 21 stories in the series and 40 years later in the 1980s the series was even continued by French author Claude Voilier (who wrote several continuation novels).

The majority of the books are compulsive reading and even as an adult I sometimes have that nostalgic desire to return to a more innocent time and read a Blyton novel.

These books are rather difficult to find in the United States though I was able to track down one online retailer that sells them as a complete set. However, if you want to sample the Famous Five series before putting down your hard earned cash for the entire series, this novel, is well worth the expense.

Your children will thank you for it

Incidentally there is a DVD production available in Region 2 of the first Famous Five adventure adventure ("Five on a Treasure Island." In the 1970s a British television series was also produced of the Famous Five adventures, and a second one in the 1990s and a 1981 movie adaptation of the first of the Adventure series (Island of Adventure).

Recommended. show less

Novels/novelettes

Yet another Famous Five,

Red