Well, I'm not sure I'd agree with the gushing blurb. The Way to Sattin Shore is a weird little book, published in 1983, so too late for me to discover when I was the right age for it. There is a lot going on here -- a dead father (or is he?), a mother who seems to have retreated inside herself, two aloof older brothers, a possible new friend, a frightening grandmother, a creepy graveyard, a mysterious cat, an unexplained letter, a half-told story, a treasure in the attic -- and yet for chapter after chapter I felt that nothing was actually happening, and the events that did happen had no relevance to the plot, like a long section (well told, though) about tobogganing (Pearce writes beautifully about winter, just as she did in Tom's Midnight Garden). I also enjoyed the chapters where Kate rides her bike to the village of Sattin Shore in search of answers, doesn't find any (of course not) and then has to bike all the way home again even though she's exhausted.
If they had a telephone at home, and if she had the right change in her pocket, then she could telephone home, and her mother would answer the telephone, and she -- Kate -- could tell her where she was, and how tired she was. And if her mohther had a car, and could drive it, she would come in the car and pick her -- Kate -- up...
... and then she realised that none of it helped, because none of it was true, and she must get home by herself on her bicycle. She began quietly to cry... But no one came by, so in the end she stopped crying and got on her bicycle again and pedalled off, even more slowly than before. But she pedalled and pedalled and pedalled and pedalled...
And at last, long last, just before lighting-up time, she got home.
And then at the end, they all move to Australia! Very peculiar.
I read this not long after Secret Water and it was odd that the plot of this book also hinged on the creeping of the tide to flood an estuary. I guess it was set in the same part of the world. There are loads of different editions of Sattin Shore out there, but I'm afraid it won't be a favourite of mine.
And at last, long last, just before lighting-up time, she got home.
I had to read this book and write an essay about it when I was studying for a Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature. I thought at the time that it was an odd choice because - yes, Kate - nothing seems to happen. I remember being puzzled by it, but not a lot else. When I went to find my essay just now, I remembered that only a couple of weeks ago I'd had one of my 'purges', and had burned all my Deakin Uni papers...so I'll never know what my conclusions were!
ReplyDeleteIt was a weird one! Oh, how annoying about the purge, I'd have loved to have known what you made of it back then :)
ReplyDelete