Mary Stewart: The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

Edition: Coronet, 1996
Review number: 1030

When I first read this novel, quite soon after it was published, I thought it was the poorest that Stewart had written. On re-reading it, I have modified my opinion, and new feel that it is not actually too bad, even if not among her best.

The story is an adaptation from the tale of Alisander le Orphelin and Alice la Beale Pilgrim from the Morte d'Arthur, shorn of the late-medieval knight errantry so that it can be fitted into the sixth century setting of Stewart's Arthurian novels. Alisander is the great-nephew of King March of Cornwall (better known as Mark), whose father was killed when Alisander was a baby because of the king's jealousy of the popularity of his heir; the baby and his mother were able to escape. (This is why Alisander is "le Orphelin"; the orphan, or in modern usage, fatherless.)

The parallel story of Alice "the beautiful pilgrim" is of the daughter of a man who has vowed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem every third year - no easy promise at the time - and who takes his young daughter. Stewart has enlivened the minimal details in Malory by involving them with one of the racier stories from the history of the Franks.

Having already covered the major events of the Arthurian myth in her earlier books (with the exception of the Grail story, which she has excluded explicitly), Stewart has chosen to adapt one of its minor episodes in this novel. It doesn't have the psychological depth of the main stories, and therefore isn't as deep a foundation for character. By writing a romance rather than a thriller - most of Stewart's novels lying somewhere on the border of these two genres - The Prince and the Pilgrim is less exciting too.

Mary Stewart: The Wicked Day (1983)

Edition: Fawcett Crest, 1984 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1015

"The wicked day of destiny" is how Malory described the battle of Camlann, at which Arthur was victorious but was mortally wounded by his traitorous son Mordred. The tragic ending of the story interested the medieval mind more than it does our own, with our cultural yearning for the cosy, happy ending; and this is why today's retellings tend not to concentrate on the event which gave Malory the title for his whole poem, the Morte d'Arthur.

There are certain inconsistencies in the traditional portrayal of an evil Mordred, and Stewart in this novel has attempted to smooth some of them out, at the same time softening the ending. As a central character, he brings more life to The Wicked Day than there is in any of Stewart's Arthurian novels since The Crystal Cave. He is made an ambitious but not wicked young man, misled by false reports of Arthur's death to take the crown rather than taking advantage of the king's absence to rebel. My feeling is that this should make the ending more tragic, but in fact it isn't; this is mainly because it is not sufficiently real to be affecting.

The let down of the ending is one of the problems of The Wicked Day; it also suffers from repeating too much of earlier writers. While it would be virtually impossible to write an Arthurian fantasy that wasn't derivative in some way, much of the characterisation of the children of Morgause (Mordred along with Lot's four sons) is taken pretty much directly from T.H. White. Stewart is a bit more explicit about incestuous desire than White could be, but the psychology (particularly of the twins Agravaine and Gaheris) is identical. This is important, because the five of them are the most important characters in the novel, not excluding Arthur himself.

Mary Stewart: The Last Enchantment (1979)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979
Review number: 997

Many modern adaptations of the Arthurian legends have a tendency to flag and fade as they move towards their end. The reason that this happens, I suspect, is connected to the current fashion for putting Merlin at the centre of the story, when his place in the legends is virtually over with Arthur's accession of the throne. Then, the initiative shifts, and considerable changes would be needed to make him remain the most interesting hero. He is involved less and less before falling prey to Nimue, in what is the most interesting legend about his later life.

Mary Stewart does her best, but suffers from this problem as much as other authors who have used a similar approach. The best part of the novel is towards the end, as Merlin tells of his experience of illness and near death. Stewart might have been better off editing her material down from a trilogy to a pair of novels, because the second one, The Hollow Hills, also fails to set the imagination alight.

Mary Stewart: The Hollow Hills (1973)

Edition: Coronet, 1974
Review number: 983

The second of Stewart's Arthurian novels continues the story from the point of view of Merlin, from Arthur's conception until his ascension of the British throne. Of all her novels, it has least of the sense of adventure that is important in a thriller, and it suffers massively as a result. It amounts to a tedious sequel to the enjoyable Crystal Cave.

The Hollow Hills has most of the virtues of Stewart's other novels - well drawn characters and background, an easy style - but it fatally lacks the suspense and tension. The main device in the plot is Merlin's search for the sword Caliburn (Excalibur), to be used to proce Arthur's claim to the throne, and this is made too simple through supernatural means to bear the weight of a whole novel. T.H. White's Sword in the Stone proves a far more interesting and exciting retelling of the childhood of Arthur.

The exception is the melodramatic scene near the end where Merlin confronts Morgause after she has seduced Arthur, before he discovers his identity and that she is his half-sister. It is a set piece which doesn't quite come off, but its tone is startlingly unlike that of the rest of the novel.

Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave (1970)

Edition: Coronet, 1971 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 970

Mary Stewart's Arthurian novels, particularly the first three, are her biggest selling. This is the first, a first person narrative of the childhood and early adult life of Merlin. It makes him the illegitimate child of Ambrosius, conceived when he was a fugitive long before he became High King of Britain, and a Welsh princess from Carmarthen, the town supposedly named after Merlin. (The main political events of the novel, from the reigns of Vortigern and Ambrosius, are taken directly from Geoffrey of Monmouth's "history" of the kings of Britain.)

In this novel, Stewart minimises Merlin's magical powers, allowing just some minor charms and some prophetic ability, together with intelligence and a somewhat better education than would be common at the time, even among the upper classes or in the church. It fits quite closely with the kind of minor paranormal powers given to characters in some of her later novels, particularly Touch Not the Cat and Thornyhold.

What makes The Crystal Cave work is that it is one of the clearest and most consistent rationalisations of the strange myths created around Merlin's origins. The style is (not surprisingly) very like Stewart's thrillers, and so it is easy to read and has a convincing enough background. It certainly deserves its place as one of the best known novelisations of the legend.

Mary Stewart: Touch Not the Cat (1976)

Edition: Coronet, 1977 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number:782

This was the last thriller written by Mary Stewart for quite a considerable length of time, as she concentrated on her series of Arthurian novels. It belongs with the novels she wrote later, rather than with the earlier ones, being lighter in tone (more a romance than a thriller), set in England, and with the paranormal playing an important role.

Bryony Ashley comes from a family with a long history, a beautiful ancient house, and no money. They also have a secret: inherited telepathic powers which have in the past led to accusations of witchcraft. Bryony can communicate with one of her cousins, but even though they have fallen in love he has never revealed which one of them he is. The thriller part of the plot is basically the suspicion that at least one of her cousins is involved in the death of her father in a hit and run car accident and the discovery that several small, valuable items have been removed from the house and sold, contrary to the terms of the family trust.

The focus of the novel is the romance between Bryony and her cousin, and this means that the telepathy works better than is usually the case with the paranormal in thrillers. It is essential to the plot in an interesting way, and the tension between Bryony's feelings and her suspicions of her cousins is very well written. Altogether, Touch Not the Cat is an interesting and unusual novel.

Mary Stewart: The Moon-Spinners (1962)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964
Review number: 673

In this Mary Stewart thriller, the exotic location is Crete (before mass tourism); the young heroine works at the British embassy in Athens, and is taking a holiday with the older cousin who brought her up - at least in her teens - when she comes across a man in the middle of the countryside who has been shot.

In many ways, The Moon-Spinners is too much a rewrite of My Brother Michael to be really successful; it ends up being one of Stewart's most lacklustre novels. The Greek background is gorgeous, but she has written the same story too often for it to work this time. This is the last time she sticks so closely to the formula, and it was probably about time she moved on.

Mary Stewart: The Gabriel Hounds (1967)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967
Review number: 669

Lady Hester Stanhope was, at least when seen from a distance, a romantic figure. Her background was the English Regency nobility, and yet she ended up in a palace in Syria, playing the role of the (male) Arab potentate. She is the basis for the character around whom this novel rotates, but in this case at least the reality behind the romance is rather more shabby - ostentation is not cheap in the twentieth century.

After many years during which Harriet Mansel has hidden herself away in her valley in the Lebanon, two relatives on holiday in the Middle East decide to try to visit her. (Her eccentricity makes them rather unsure of their welcome.) But when they do get in to see her, it looks as though something is wrong - they just can't quite put their finger on what it is.

The Gabriel Hounds is not Mary Stewart's most successful thriller, even though all the usual ingredients are there. Though the background is the same kind of exotic location shared by all her thrillers up to this point, it is more perfunctorily sketched in. By 1967, she probably needed more work
to come up with somewhere evocative, yet not already familiar to her readers; she did eventually abandon this part of her formula in favour of a nostalgic version of rural England. Her plotting also lets her down a bit this time, and the ending is particularly disappointing.

Mary Stewart: Airs Above the Ground (1965)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1972
Review number: 658

With My Brother Michael and the Merlin trilogy, Airs Above the Ground stands at the peak of Stewart's writing. It is particularly gentle as thrillers go, but has a charm based on the three main characters.

Vanessa March is bored, staying at home while her husband Lewis is on a business trip to Stockholm, until a friend says that she has seen Lewis in a newsreel about a fire in a circus in Austria. Vanessa goes to see the newsreel, expecting the man to just be someone who looks like her husband. However, she is rather shaken when she sees not only Lewis but that he has an obviously close relationship to a stunning blonde. Vanessa agrees to accompany her friend's son to Austria - which was the reason that the newsreel was mentioned in the first place. The teenager is a bit of fresh air in Stewart's writing, being rather different from her usual cast of characters. He is perhaps a bit too much from the clean cut, adventurous and (above all) decently English style of hero, like a more grown up member of the Famous Five, but he is reasonably charming.

The story revolves around the Lippizaner horses, and their exquisite dressage, an unusual background (for an adult novel, at least). It is certainly one of Stewart's most memorable, even with much less of a sense of place than her novels usually give. A charming romantic thriller.

Mary Stewart: The Ivy Tree (1961)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964
Review number: 643

The Ivy Tree is imaginatively centred around Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, quite explicitly (the characters talk about using it as their textbook for what they are trying to do). Although both novels effectively give away the ending of the other - the earlier Brat Farrar more or less forcing Stewart to turn Tey's twist the other way, making it rather Hitchcockian - it probably makes most sense to read Tey's novel first. While not doing so will not make The Ivy Tree incomprehensible, it contains nuances which are unlikely to be noticed by someone not familiar with Brat Farrar.

Both novels are about impostors claiming to be lost heirs - unless they are about lost heirs pretending to be impostors for some reason. The Ivy Tree's Mary Grey is the image of Annabel Winslow, heir to the Northumberland farm of Whitescar, who ran away almost ten years ago. As a visitor to Hadrian's Wall, she meets Annabel's cousin, Con, who is acting as farm manager for her grandfather. Con and his sister believe that Annabel is dead, and that Con should inherit in return for the hard work he has put into the farm, but her grandfather refuses to believes this, and is understood to have left things in such a way that Con will be unable to use the money for investment in the farm. They come up with a scheme for Mary to pretend to be Annabel, then inherit whatever is left to her and turn it over to Con, keeping the money due Annabel from her mother's family, which will provide a reasonable amount to live on.

Compared to Brat Farrar, which maintains its suspense to the end and which is an acknowledged classic of the thriller genre, The Ivy Tree is poorly constructed. Stewart was attempting something a bit different from her usual novels - Mary Grey is no innocent caught up in something she doesn't understand - and The Ivy Tree is something of an interesting experiment that doesn't quite come off. The ending, an extended piece of action in a huge storm rather reminiscent of the weather scenes in Thomas Hardy, is implausible and slapdash.

The plot may be substandard, but the characters are among Mary Stewart's best, particularly the attractive but menacing Con, who could have escaped from a D.H. Lawrence novel. The idea behind the story also makes it one of Stewart's most interesting, though it is not one which invites re-reading like some of her others.

Mary Stewart: Rose Cottage (1997)

Edition: Coronet, 1998
Review number: 611

In recent years, more or less since she wrote the Merlin trilogy, Mary Stewart's novels have become more romances and less thrillers. Rose Cottage is the most recent, and bears a distinct resemblance to Thornyhold, from just a few years earlier. Both are about returns to childhood homes, and both are about the protagonist discovering her true self, coming to new understanding about her family, both have an old fashioned atmosphere, and both are set in small English villages.

Rose Cottage is set in the late forties, and is the story of Kate Herrick's return to the small house where she grew up, to sort out some items belonging to her grandmother, now living in Scotland, before the cottage is sold. When she arrives, she discovers that some things have gone, that someone has been digging in the garden, and that an elderly neighbour believes she has seen Kate's dead mother.

Kate's mother is the important person in the story, for the major part of what Kate does is to find out more about her; after having her daughter by an unknown father, she left the house at the insistence of an unforgiving religious aunt, before being killed in a road accident. That is all Kate really knows about her, and she is driven by a desire to understand her mother and find out the identity of her father.

Rose Cottage is a gentle, warm hearted novel; hardly challenging, but just the sort of thing to read when ill.

Mary Stewart: My Brother Michael (1960)

Edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962
Review number: 571

Background is always important in Mary Stewart's thrillers, and this is particularly the case for My Brother Michael. The plot is broadly the same as it has been in all her novels up to this point, with a normal young woman getting involved in something very unusual. The setting for this novel is Delphi, and the protagonists are both classics teachers; the background is really the incredibly resonant nature of ancient Greek literature. This is conveyed extremely successfully, and makes the novel's atmosphere very similar to Donna Tartt's Secret History.

The strength of the background makes My Brother Michael one of Mary Stewart's best novels. The plot into which Camilla Haven is drawn is particularly suited to the background, an Oresteian tale in which Simon Lester is investigating the mysterious death of his elder brother Michael, SOE operative working with wartime resistance groups in the Delphi area.

This is the Mary Stewart novel in which every ingredient comes together successfully to create a really satisfying whole.

Mary Stewart: Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)

Edition: Hodder
Review number: 551

One of Mary Stewart's best novels, Nine Coaches Waiting takes themes common to most of her stories (isolated young woman under threat has doubts about the man she falls for), but is far more tautly suspenseful than usual. This is partly because the major characters are particularly believable, and you really care what happens to the central character, governess Linda Martin, and her charge Philippe de Valmy.

The plot is simple. Linda escapes from her dreary job in an English prep school when the patron of the orphanage in which she had been brought up recommends her to a French friend to teach the orphaned Comte de Valmy English. She gains the odd impression that a lack of understanding of French is important, and conceals the fact that she was brought up in Paris during the war before her parents were killed. This turns out to be not the only strange aspect of the job, and she feels she is becoming involved in a sinister plot at the same time as she is falling in love with Philippe's cousin.

The title refers to The Revenger's Tragedy, in which a poor girl is seduced by a rich man's servant who promises her unbelievable and absurd wealth - not just one coach waiting to transport her, but nine. Linda is of course a poor woman overawed by the splendours of a noble estate, but the connections are fairly sparse. Stewart uses the quotation in a structural way, dividing the novel into "coaches" rather than parts, each having a journey as a central aspect.

Mary Stewart: Thunder on the Right (1957)

Edition: Coronet, 1992
Review number: 503

Typical of Stewart's thrillers, portraying a young woman uncovering a plot in a glamorous location, Thunder on the Right is perhaps not one of her best novels, but it is still well worth reading.

Jennifer Silver, an English artist, travels to a remote village in the Pyrenees to visit her half-French cousin, who is thinking about retiring to a nunnery in the area. However, when she arrives at the Valle des Orages, Jennifer is told that Gillian is dead following a car crash, and is shown a grave being decorated with the gentians she loved. Jennifer is confused by this, as her cousin was colour blind and would never have commented on the blue of the flowers, and she gradually becomes convinced that the dead woman is not her cousin - and therefore that Gillian has disappeared.

The story is complicated by a romantic subplot almost identical to that of Stewart's previous novel, Wildfire at Midnight. Jennifer's father has sent a suitor that he approves of (though her mother does not) to the village without her knowledge. This repetition of ideas from earlier novels is the major flaw of Thunder on the Right; these devices were far fresher the first time around.

Mary Stewart: Wildfire at Midnight (1956)

Edition: Crest
Review number: 454

A sense of place is important in many of Stewart's novels, particularly in the second, in which the brooding mountains of Skye form the backdrop to a story of Wicker Man-like ritual murder. Gianetta Drury is a model who goes to Scotland for a rest from the frenetic London fashion scene, only to find that her ex-husband is staying at the same hotel (recommended by her parents who want them to get back together). The week before her arrival, the body of a local girl has been found on the mountain, in circumstances pointing to one of the men staying at the hotel. Then one of the women staying there is killed, her climbing rope cut during an ascent of Blaven.

The suspense is manipulated in what is perhaps an overly obvious manner. Phrases like "Gianetta could sense that something awful was going to happen" recur. The question of the identity of the killer is an easy one to solve. The characters are conventional. Yet Wildfire at Midnight draws the reader in, and is an enjoyable light read.

Mary Stewart: Madam, Will You Talk (1955)

Edition: Coronet, 1981
Review number: 438

Mary Stewart's first novel sets out the territory that she has occupied ever since when writing her thrillers. A romantic plot, with the heroine playing the major role - and a non-passive one; misunderstandings about the role of the hero, a beautiful setting. Her most innovative aspect is the use she makes of the heroine. Charity Selborne is not the shrinking violet of male thriller writers; she is an expert racing driver, a fighter, and the catalyst of the whole plot, which is told from her point of view.

Taking a holiday in the south of France, she is charmed by a boy staying at the same hotel and repelled by his beautiful mother. She is told that they are hiding from the boy's father, a murderer who escaped justice (insufficient evidence). Then, on a day trip to Nimes, she meets David's father, who has been searching for him, and falls for him despite what she thinks she knows about him.

Such a romantic plot seems intrinsically improbable, yet Stewart works hard to reduce the occurrence of unmotivated coincidence. (She meets the father; this isn't coincidence because he's looking for the son who's staying at her hotel.) It is not surprising that Madam, Will You Talk marks the beginning of such a successful career.