lightreads

I don't know why I'm reading back through your reviews this evening (morning, now), but I am, and I will inevitably comment on this series because it's still my absolute favourite series all these years later. I first read this sitting in a hospital waiting room when I was 8 or 9, while my mum was in traction for a slipped disc, and I tumbled headlong into it. This book is the only one of the series I haven't reread very often, and part of that is about the memory of the time, but mostly it's because this was Cooper consciously and deliberately trying to write a children's book - for a competition, I think - and it shows. None of the other books talk down quite as much, or are so self-conscious, and I think that the narrative voice is a bit intrusive because of that. Which is not to say that this isn't still a wonderful book, but where the others in the series are somehow timeless, this reads as being very much of its time, if that makes sense? It's not only a period piece in its setting, but in its writing. It's a much slighter book than the rest.