Over Sea, Under Stone

[lightreads]

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I am on a serious childhood nostalgia bender over here. Let that be a warning to you.



This series came back to me like a bolt from the blue on a perfectly normal day last week, and I suddenly had to read it right now. But, fantastic, no problem, I thought. When I originally read these books -- and read them, and read them, and read them -- it was on cassette. The good old National Library Service for the Blind cassettes in their snap plastic cases. And the NLS has been busily digitizing the collection (only about a decade late) and I could swear I saw these books go up . . .



Indeed. The NLS had digitized four out of the five, and I was sure I could ahem find Greenwitch on the back of a truck in one of the internet's ahem alleyways. So I snagged this first one and put it on my handheld and trotted off to groom the dog.



And then I turned on the book.



And it was not my narrator.



I remember her very clearly: she was British, a contralto. A gentle delivery, but with a lot of life for the children, particularly Barney, and even more gravitas for Gumerry. She read this book to me a good twenty times between the ages of eight and thirteen, and she was all that is right and proper.



And sometime in the last few decades, the NLS re-recorded the books and reissued the titles. Those old cassettes were wearing out, I'm sure, even the master copy.



And it was not okay. He was American, and he was doing his best, I'm sure, but he was not right.



Which consumed my attention for the entire book, so I don't actually have much to say aside from outraged nostalgia. This is younger and lighter than I remember. A quest story with cartoonishly simple us/them dynamics and some cute kids. Reminded me a startling amount of Arthur Ransom, because the whole thing had that quality of taking place in a bubble of childish creation, where great adventures happen and then you have tea. I was also interested to see the near-total lack of magic here, given the scope of the powers at work. Made me think about the work the rest of the series does to make sure the Drews, the mortals, remain separate. Three from the circle, three from the track. How that matters to these books in ways I'm still unpacking. But that's a subject for a later book.



But the narrator was wrong.





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Comments

[livingbyfiction]

This one always felt like a diverting vacation project of Merriman's. It doesn't even approximate the roads-have-power quality of the other books. And an American narrator! What an insult to Welsh pride and good taste everywhere.

Was the narrator Alex Jennings (excerpt here: https://catalog.dclibrary.org/vufind/Record/ocn124073916)? Is he an American faking a British accent? I seem to hear some American flatness occasionally, but that would just be too damn weird.

[livingbyfiction]

Comparative analysis of 3 library systems:

Arlington has them all on e-Audio except for The Grey King, all narrated by Alex Jennings. They have The Grey King on CD, narrated by Richard Mitchley.

The DC library has Over Sea on e-Audio, the rest on CD. They're all read by Alex Jennings except for The Grey King (read by Mitchley).

Montgomery County has them all on CD, but even the cassette format is Alex Jennings. Bummer!

[lightreads]

No, the NLS does its own in-house recordings with a stable of professional narrators who have some crossover with the commercial audiobook world. They're generally good quality productions. (It drives me a little nuts to see the NLS spending all this money and resources to duplicate books already recorded commercially, just because that's what they have to do to take advantage of the alternate formats copyright loophole.) The Jennings is the commercial audio production. Random House, I think. It's what I turned to when the NLS narrator just couldn't cut it anymore for The Dark Is Rising. The Jennings is quite good, I think -- he does a good Cornwall, and a very muddy-mouthed Buckinghamshire. And his Merriman is gruff and remote and a little frightening, but wonderful all the same. As he should be.

[ecaterin]

This one always felt like a diverting vacation project of Merriman's. It doesn't even approximate the roads-have-power quality of the other books.

Indeed - my main complaint as well!

[cahn]

An American narrator, that is really wrong!

I'm rereading the series as well right now (um, starting with Silver on the Tree and working backward, because I'm contrary like that) and I have to say that the books are kind of problematic structurally in a lot of ways I didn't notice when I was a kid (Blodwen Rowlands didn't bother me nearly as much as she does now), as well as some I did (what IS with the memory thing?), but wow, are they awesome as well.

...except for the first book, which is definitely much lighter (and was written much earlier than the others, if I recall correctly).

[ecaterin]

There *are* lots of structural problems aren't there! And they bug the crap out of me....and yet somehow I love the series just as much. I remember reading the first several Harry Potter books thinking, "Some seriously clunky plotting. Dialog=tin ear and driving me bonkers. Can already project the fairy-tale-logic story arc. ......and yet I can't put them down!" And the Dresden books - they are actually physically painful in many ways....but I read them over and over and over. Good story telling is where it's at, is all I can figure :D

[cahn]

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I still love it just as much. With the Cooper I was impressed even more than on previous readings with the sheer power of her writing, as well as the mythic quality, layers on layers, that she projects almost effortlessly -- it's really an amazing thing she did, and there are precious few writers who can do that (I suppose Tolkien, of course; Cordwainer Smith, in a completely different kind of way; and... umm... drawing a blank.)

That actually impresses me a lot more now than it did when I was a kid, because I know a little more now about how difficult it is to write like that.

[lightreads]

Yes, the writing. The Dark is Rising, in particular. I just finished it, and there were so many deft turns of phrase, perfect images where she did so much in maybe five words. She can pack Christmas and snow and the smell of holly and cold air and magic into one sentence.

[ecaterin]

Oooo, definitely one of my favorite serises as well!

But first.....Ugh, nothing worse than THE WRONG NARRATOR. Lemony Snicket reading his own books was brilliant. The other reader....wtf? It's totally unfair to pit someone against Snicket's narration! Whoever did the original Vorkosigan books was just totally, utterly, wrong - and I didn't even have a previous narrator I bonded to in the past! A friend of mine wanted very much to have those books on audio....and I was so offended by the WRONGNESS of the narrator, I recorded Cordelia's Honor for her myself :D Along with Komarr, A Civil Campaign, Diplomatic Immunity....and then all of the ADS-verse I could manage :P

Similarly, if I ever replace my paper books (and I read them to pieces, so every few years I have to), I'll look long and hard for the same printing, cause having the words in a different place on the page, or in the wrong font, or the wrong weight of paper....um....I'm a very kinesthetic person. Things have to be in the space/time I expect them to be! Or I feel like the world is completely off kilter!

But, back to the thing!

For the times these books work, I'm willing to forgive world building with enormous holes all over the magical theory and some seriously forced retconning of "we saw some imagery a couple of books ago, better give it a call-back!"

I adore The Dark is Rising and The Gray King with huge passionate adoration. They both capture a very constant sense of atmosphere - setting, people, time and the feel of the magic. When Will wakes up, goes to the window seat and sees the snowy woods change while hearing the fleeting music.....I have that moment imprinted on my brain. Same with the time spent with Bran, Will and Cafall. The places are very real to the author (places she knew well since childhood), and it shows - they seemed to give her a jumping off point for a wholeness in both sensory and narrative feel.

Greenwitch has a lot of power and she nailed the sheer sense of strangeness of a pagan entity, but I felt like the hugeness of the got short shrift. I felt like there was more there. Over Sea and Under Stone is, as remarked above, some relaxing lark for Merriman. It just completely lacks weight. ....and as long as I can discard the last couple of pages, Silver on the Tree makes me happy because we get Bran & Will together (plus Wales) again.

BUT THE LAST COUPLE OF PAGES NEVER HAPPENED. CAUSE I SAY SO.

[kate_nepveu]

The other (commercial) reader I heard for A Series of Unfortunate Events was Tim Curry, who I recall preferring to the author, though I heard the books Curry recorded first which tends to matter to me.

Re: Cooper, the last time I re-read these I found these posts useful (wow, are they really nine years old now?): http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=truepenny&keyword=The%20Dark%20Is%20Rising%20Sequence&filter=all

[ecaterin]

Ooooo! I'm really enjoying this analysis, thanks for the recc!!

[kate_nepveu]

Glad to hear it!

[lightreads]

Me too!

[readerjane]

Oh, goodness, The Dark is Rising! That series owned my soul when I was little. I haunted the grade school library, asking the librarians if the fifth book had come in yet. No internet in those days, and I had no idea what resources there were to find books not yet published: all I had to go on was the blurb on the back of The Grey King saying, "the last book in this series will be Silver On the Tree."

I can imagine how wrong that narrator's voice must be. Audible.com's narrator is Alex Jennings (male), who is at least British: would that help any? Or would it still be just WRONG?

I remember the poetry in that series almost as well as I remember the inscription from the One Ring. "Though grim from the grey king shadows fall, yet singing the golden harp shall guide to break their sleep and bid them ride." happy sigh

[cahn]

I remember the poetry in that series almost as well as I remember the inscription from the One Ring.

Me too! "And where the midsummer's tree grows tall, by Pendragon's sword the Dark shall fall!"

[lightreads]

Yes, I ended up turning to Audible for the Jennings when I couldn't cope with the wrongness anymore. He is doing a quite lovely job of it, too, with a Cornwall accent for all the background characters in Greenwitch.

Last year sometime a whole pack of us went out to our local bar on a Thursday night and had a few drinks. And as we were walking home the topic of these books came up, and axiom_of_stripe and uschickens recited the entire poem -- "when the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back," from start to finish cold, no prompting. It was one of the geekiest and most impressive things I've seen in a while.

[readerjane]

Best of all? I felt such an outcast for *caring* so much about these tales when I was a youngling. But now? It's OMG!You!Too time. At last.

[livingbyfiction]

Here's the other thing about Over Sea, Under Stone: even in the poem, "and the grail gone before" sounds like a stumble.

[ravurian]

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.