The Moon-Spinners for the #1962Club

 

The Moonspinners / Mary Stewart
NY: HarperTorch, 2003, c1962
400 p.

The 1962 Club is a readalong hosted yearly by Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book, and I'm just squeaking in to the end of the week. 

Although there were many titles possible for some 1962 reading, I thought I'd pick up another Mary Stewart - I've been revisiting some of her work lately, but this is one I had never read. Perfect timing! 

This is a very identifiable Mary Stewart novel; it has a damsel in distress, retrograde gender roles, dastardly foreigners, and lots and lots of descriptive passages. In this particular novel, we find Nicola Ferris, a young woman working at the British Embassy in Athens, heading off for a holiday to a small village in Crete, for some peace and quiet. She is planning on meeting her much older cousin Frances there for a few days. Frances is a plant and garden specialist so this should be a place with lots to interest her. The descriptions of the landscape, the heat, hills, flora, the sea, all create a vibrant sense of place. 

But of course Nicola sets off early, and of course her blithe assumption that she'll be fine alone is quickly disproved. On her first afternoon, before she even gets to her hotel, she runs across two desperate men in the hills. One is Mark, a young Englishman, who won't tell her what's up, but clearly wants her out of it. He is youthful but already very set in old ways of thinking - he doesn't want a 'girl' involved, although they are probably the same age. And of course his being injured, mysterious and English means that Nicola falls for him even if she denies it to herself for half the book. 

Sending her away to keep her safe backfires somewhat, however. The safe hotel she's heading to turns out the be the centre of the intrigue and she pokes around and stirs up the hornets. Frances arrives, so that Nicola has someone to talk to and cover for her, while they wander the hills, looking to help. They do in the end, but the final scenes are both wildly eventful and over the top. The men are very manly, and Nicola turns into a bit of a sea nymph herself. 

But there are lovely bits among the drama, including the descriptive passages. In one scene, Nicola tells the legend of the Moon Spinners to Mark, and it's a pretty tale, which turns out to play a part in their adventure, too. 

"Night after night, you can see the moon getting less and less, the ball of light waning, while it grows on the spindles of the maidens. Then at length, the moon is gone, and the world has darkness, and rest, and the creatures of the hillsides are safe from the hunter"

It may sound a bit cliched or predictable, but I actually found this one enjoyable. I like Stewart's style of writing, in which she describes the surroundings and 'set' so to speak; this also includes many descriptions of clothing, which I find fascinating. The plot here is a bit far-fetched but not outside the realm of a romantic suspense novel, and everything ends well (at least for the 'good guys'). 

The discordant notes are, as always, her description of the villains, who are always non-English. And there is the cook/bartender at the hotel, Tony, who is clearly and campily gay - it isn't too bad until Frances gets there and begins calling him "Little Lord Fauntleroy", loudly and derisively. It's particularly jarring coming from someone who is supposed to be one of the 'good' characters. 

But this is a popular novel from 1962, and I'm not sure that this kind of book could be written now, not without a lot of updating. As a novel from 1962, it's readable and fairly entertaining.