mewsings in December 2024

This is Fair’s second novel for pre-teens/young adults, published in 1976. It has a number of similarities with her previous book, The Ivory Anvil, in that it combines a light touch of fantasy with a gentle tale about children exploring a landscape. Here, there’s a bit more of a threat to the landscape—though, again, a light one—and like the previous book there’s a mystery from the past to be solved.

The landscape in this case is the area surrounding a canal in rural Derbyshire. The Atkins family have just moved into Bickley Mill, a disused water mill in need of renovation. (Their father, a teacher, tells them it’s going to take two years to get it into the state he wants it in, including completely replacing the plumbing and installing an interior staircase, as at present the only way to get to the bedrooms is via outside steps. 1970s dad that he is, he intends to do all this work himself, with a little help from his kids.) In their spare time, the kids, twins Rachael and Rowan, explore the canal, and get to know Mr Benson, whose job it is to care for it. Like the mill, the canal is basically disused, and Benson is battling to keep it going, as he knows certain local forces—farmers and factory-owners—would rather it was closed for good. People dump rubbish in it, and others engage in outright vandalism. Unlike similar books such as The Grey Dancer and The Walking Stones, the threat to the canal isn’t a threat to a whole rural way of life, then. Rather, it’s an interesting piece of the past, one that adds charm to the landscape, and provides a habitat for local wildlife, including kingfishers, ducks, moorhens, swans, frogs, water voles, pike, carp, tench, roach and woodpeckers. Part of the appeal of the The Penny Tin Whistler is being allowed to dwell in this country environment with the kids as they explore it. (There’s even a map, spread out over three pages at the start of the book. It seems to have been cut off, though, and there was presumably meant to be more of it. I suspect the author, who was an artist and I’m guessing is the one who drew it, wanted it to be a fold-out. I certainly wanted it to be a fold-out.)

The fantasy aspect is, as with Sioned in The Ivory Anvil, a sort of enhanced sensitivity to people and to the past. Twins Rachael and Rowan have a telepathic bond: they’re always aware of where one another is, and though they can share thoughts, they’ve agreed not to be too intrusive. It also turns out, though, that they can pick up lingering memories from the past. It’s nicely done, as when Rachael finds an out-of-the-way nook under the ivy and finds herself thinking:

Me. Dressed in green,
Cat’s cradle,
Hairy string,
Knotted, beneath the ivy.

Only, she knows the “Me” isn’t herself. She’s picking up someone else’s memories. Rowan, meanwhile, gets impressions in his dreams. After some investigation, they discover that a pair of young twins like themselves used to live at the Mill, but were separated when they were evacuated during the War, after which their grandfather, who lived at the Mill and was their only family, died, meaning they never returned. (One slight niggle: why were they evacuated from such a rural spot?) Rachael and Rowan realise that these twins, being younger than themselves, and whom they know never returned, might never have been able to find one another after that separation, and perhaps that’s why they’re picking up these memories. (The title of the novel comes from what Rachael and Rowan call one of these twins for a while, as Rachael senses her, at one point, playing a penny tin whistle.)

As with The Ivory Anvil, the investigation is dotted throughout the daily life of the twins as they go to school, help with the house, and explore the canal. But the quiet pace of the story never feels boring. The only complaint I have about the book, plot-wise, is it leaves its resolution so late that some points aren’t fully resolved. One of these is that, in order to fully access his dreams and learn where the lost boy-twin might be, Rowan has to mentally detach from the telepathic bond he’s shared with his sister since birth. This is a scary moment for him, and he wakes the next morning to find himself without it for the first time—in part, though, appreciating the sense of individuality and privacy that comes with it. But is it permanent? I’m supposing it is, but I felt there had to be at least one revisit, one exchange between the pair about the loss of their deeper connection, or something like that, just to resolve the issue. (The other main plot point that doesn’t get resolved is that, although the lost twins are located, we never get to see them, or know they’ve got together again. Perhaps that might have proved too emotionally weighty a scene compared to the rest of the book, but still, I felt it was needed.)

I found two reviews from the time, one positive, one negative. Juliet Page in the Times Literary Supplement wrote:

“Sylvia Fair knows well how children think, talk and act, and her twins, with their grouches and enthusiasms, are the genuine article. Though steeped in atmosphere, this adventure is set firmly in the everyday world of plumbing, homework, and conservation… As Sylvia Fair admirably demonstrates, it is possible to be both down-to-earth and enchanting. Her novel is to be thoroughly applauded; it is one of those delightful children’s books that reanimates one’s own memories of magical times spent in secret places.”

But Stuart Hannabuss in The Times, dismissing the book as “a generic package” in comparison with her previous novel, goes on to say:

“The Penny Tin Whistler with its children in telepathic contact with spirit children of the past and with its workable theme of saving a canal, evokes a mood like Lucy Boston’s Chimneys of Green Knowe, but does little to bind the themes together or to pin down the people. Children grow used to themes cropping up again and again, but have every right to expect that a story should do its own work.”

(I wonder if he expected child readers to all be as well-read as himself.)

To me, The Penny Tin Whistler seemed a perfect follow-on from Fair’s previous novel, and I’d have been happy to read more in the same vein, but her next books were for much younger readers. At least she got a good cover, this time, though.

I was immediately intrigued by this anthology of all-new stories set in the world of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood. I wavered a bit over reading it, at first, as generally I’m not so much into fictional worlds as I am the works of individual creators, but all the same I was intrigued to see what other writers might make of Holdstock’s ideas, when there’s so much to explore. What finally decided me was the thought that, if nothing else, these stories were sure to throw some interesting light on Holdstock’s own work.

It’s an anthology of roughly two halves. First, we have the stories of people coming to the wood and encountering the mythagos it generates. A lot of these had the same basic pattern (which isn’t a criticism): childhood memories, or the rumours of something strange going on, usually combined with some loss either in the past or the present, would draw someone to the wood, and there they would start to see that characteristic flickering at the edges of their vision. What worked in this sort of tale was the way it was presented. John Langan’s “Et in Acadia” (not a typo), for instance, is told entirely by a group of adult siblings, reminiscing about their terminally ill brother, and the strange games he led them in as children. Here, it’s the unreliability and variability of memory—particularly of childhood viewed from many years later—that allows the magic to leak through: what’s accepted as a child can only be revealed in all its true strangeness when it’s revisited as an adult. My favourite of this type of story was “Voici Les Neiges d’Antan” by Chaz Brenchley, about the easy friendship of an adolescent boy and girl, who have for years been entering a wood near where they holiday, spending time with what they know is no ordinary being—either a fairy or a mythago—but now one of them decides they want to take things further, go deeper into the wood and meet something different. It’s written with a very light touch, but hits the sense of loss—which is embedded in Holdstock’s work and pretty much every story in this collection—spot on.

The other main type of story, here, is tales of mythagos themselves. These often take place entirely within the woods. They tend to be the more impressionistic or experimental pieces, relying less on plot and more on a sort of evocation of the strange state of being that a mythago must experience. Just to name a couple of favourites, I liked “Mad Pranks and Merry Jests” by Jen Williams for its refusal to be consolatory, and “Calling the Tune” by Lucy Holland, which presented, in scenes scattered across time, the development of a particular mythago from its originating event to its most characteristic, archetypal form, and then to a modern-day manifestation. (And one of the points of interest throughout this anthology is how modern elements get integrated into the world of Ryhope Wood, such as podcasts, mobile phones, internet rumours and the mythago-seeking subcultures that chase those rumours.)

There are a few stories that don’t fit either type. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Paved with Gold”, for instance, in which London is treated as a mythago-generating landscape, was perhaps more the sort of thing I was expecting from this anthology, applying as it does Holdstock’s idea to new landscapes. Tchaikovsky brings out some good ideas, such as how national myth-figures, in their mythago forms, might have a particular attraction for certain ideologies. Another story I immediately liked was “Into the Heart” by Alan Stroud, set in a scientific institute where a mythago has been captured for study—but, of course, there’s no possibility of scientific observation of a mythago, because the observer is as much a part of it as its originating myth.

As to the light these tales threw on Holdstock’s work: one thought I found popping into my head after reading some of them was “mythagos aren’t therapy”. In a few of the stories, it seemed, the mythagos went out of their way to work towards the sort of resolution—in one case, I seem to recall, even laying out a psychological explanation in modern terms—that just didn’t fit with the far more savage process in Holdstock’s novels. Can it, though, be said that Holdstock’s mythagos aren’t therapy? There’s certainly a psychological need behind them—one view of the Huxley family’s interactions with the wood, and in particular with the mythago Guiwenneth, is that it all stems from the loss of Jennifer Huxley, George’s wife and the boys’ mother, and their attempt to compensate for that. I’m pretty sure it’s stated in one of Holdstock’s novels that myths emerge when there is an irreversible change or loss. Myths and mythagos certainly have some sort of cathartic purpose, then, but the way that plays out in Holdstock’s novels is usually savage and excoriating. It’s the therapy of being stripped back to nothing and reborn—as in Tallis’s “I feel violated, consumed; yet I feel loved” from Lavondyss. Harsh, savage, dangerous and difficult, it’s hardly consolatory. Just look at how the mythago Guiwenneth plays out in interaction with each of the Huxley males: all of them lose her, usually multiple times, just as they lost their mother. It’s as though the mythago idea of therapy is to keep hitting you with the trauma till you’re so covered in scar tissue it no longer hurts.

Another thing that stands out is just how strange Holdstock’s own imagination could be, in those savage moments that produced, for instance, the image of a rider bound in burning straw on the back of a wild-running horse. There was something just so dark and archaic in his imagination, and it’s only when you see his ideas in other hands that you realise just how unique to him those moments were. (I think Maura McHugh comes closest, in her story, “Raptor”.)

I will say that I was surprised how many of the tales in Heartwood returned to Ryhope Wood. I’d expected a lot more different locations from around the world, and myths from different cultures. (Perhaps there could be a follow-up anthology, Mythago World.)

Mythago stories are tricky. At what point does a mythago story become just a ghost story, or a monster-in-the-woods story? I still don’t know if I could tell what made the mythago idea so characteristically different. (In the first book, it was perhaps the science fictional approach to fantasy material, but that’s not so much true of the subsequent novels.) Certainly, though, a lot of the writers in this volume—clearly fond of Holdstock’s work—have grasped it.