Anybody here seen Candleshoe? Fun 1970's Disney movie starring Helen Hayes, David Niven and teenaged Jodie Foster. Also featuring a treasure hunt, pirate gold, and an Anastasia-like attempt at conning a rich English dowager. Mystery, comedy, and mayhem ensue.
I've never really grown out of the movie, so I thought I'd have a look at the original novel, Christmas at Candleshoe, by Michael Innes. Just imagine, Candleshoe plus Christmas!
Two unfortunate facts:
- Christmas at Candleshoe is not a Christmas book (the title apparently concerns a 17th century monument-carver named Gerard Christmas).
- Nor is it a children's book.
In my opinion, it's not even an interesting book. I just barely made it to the second paragraph.
We are looking at an English rural landscape on a summer afternoon. Most of us are urban folk -- we come from New York and London and Birmingham and St. Louis -- and our principle sensation is the comfortable one of getting our money's worth. The Englishness is unchallengable, the rurality unflawed, and the whole effect a landscape in the fullest sense of the word. This last circumstance, indeed, makes a few of us obscurely uneasy.Delimiting the forest...
"Delimiting the forest"? I dunno about you, but *poof* -- there went my attention span. A grudging flip through the next 80 pages exposed very little adventure, and very much chewy British prose. Phooey.
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Currently reading:
The Wager
by Donna Jo Napoli
(THANK YOU MELISSA WEISBERG!)
