What Enid Blyton book are you reading right NOW!

[Wolfgang]

Thank you for the prospect of interesting articles to come, John.

[Wolfgang]

I hope you are feeling better Wolfgang, and enjoying watching your programmes.

Thank you for your good wishes, Katharine, I hope I have the worst of it behind me.

[Rob Houghton]

Currently rereading 'The Rat-A-Tat Mystery - mainly because of the wintry setting. Many of you will know its not my favourite Barney book by a long shot, but I thought I'd give it another go.

I just reached the part where they meet up with Barney for the first time since finding his family - and I think this paragraph sums up the reasons I think the last two books are less successful - Barney is too domesticated -

Barney looked different. He was no taller and no fatter, and his face was as brown as ever. But now he was dressed well, his hair was cut properly, and he wore a tie, which he had rarely done before when he had been a circus boy. In fact, he looked extremely nice'

All those bits in red really incense me! It's as if Enid is pouring scorn on the character of Barney when he was a circus boy - a character we had grown to love for his honestly and strength and good character - now she is appearing to be telling us that he is much better ('extremely nice' ) simply because he is wearing good clothes, has his hair cut 'properly' and wears a tie! In short, she has ruined her brilliant circus boy-character and turned him into a bland middle-class clone of all her other characters.

That's why I feel the books should certainly have stopped with 'Rubadub Mystery'!

[Lucky Star]

Yes the change in Barney's circumstances and the removal of the running sub plot about his father are the main reasons the final two books fall a bit flat. It's been a while since I read them too but I don't remember feeling that Enid was disparaging the circus boy character of Barney. Just that he was now "ordinary". I'll have to have a re-read. Rat-a-Tat's atmosphere and setting have always appealed to me.

[Rob Houghton]

I agree maybe ENid isn't disparaging...but she does seem to be saying that Barney is now much more acceptable, lol!

[John Pickup]

I've always felt that Barney's change from circus boy to respectable middle class boy spoilt the series. I like the last two books but Barney definitely loses the image he built up in the first four.

[Rob Houghton]

I agree. I do quite like the last two books (except perhaps that the plots are somewhat more simple than the first four) but I do wish Barney hadn't found his father until the last book!!

[Lucky Star]

I do wish Barney hadn't found his father until the last book!!

I have always thought that Rubadub was meant to be the last book. Somehow the first four books all seem to lead inexorably towards that ending. One of the main reasons why this series really does need to be read in order.

[Daisy]

The blurb for Rat-a Tat starts "Enid Blyton did not mean to write this book...... but lovers of these.... begged so hard... etc etc."
I'm reading it too, although agreeing with those who feel it just isn't the same. I suppose it just couldn't be!

[Dick Kirrin]

Well, I am re-reading it too, obviously as Daisy is... we are doing some joint reading as usual.

Since we are going chapter by chapter, I cannot say much more. Only that I like the setting and atmosphere. Barney has so far only appeared over the phone - so I will not comment on what he looks like and how he acts until I have jogged my memory about that.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I agree that the series loses some of its vitality and poignancy following the change in Barney's circumstances. In The Ragamuffin Mystery he even goes as far as joining in with Miss Pepper and the others when they call Snubby "a real tramp" because of his second-hand clothes, and he talks of Dai the fisher-boy as "a regular ragamuffin." It's hard to read those passages and think back to The Rockingdown Mystery, in which Barney described himself as "just tramping around." His integration into the middle-class society of the time is inevitable but it's sad to lose the romance and intrigue associated with his character.

[IceMaiden]

I've always seen Barney's change as nothing more than the normal, inviteable change that comes with wealth/ money/ good fortune. People, whether they mean to or not, alter with an upward change in fortune, they may well have had nothing before but if they suddenly come into wealth or a better lifestyle, they soon forget their own humble beginnings. I've seen and experienced them myself, looking down their nose and getting all snooty at someone while completely forgetting they came from nothing themselves, or suddenly deciding someone isn't good enough for them to talk to now their a big noise, whereas they were perfectly happy to chat away before. I don't think Barney got to the too big for his boots levels but he was obviously going to change. It wouldn't have been realistic for him to still look and behave as if he was still a wandering lonely boy sleeping under hedges when he was living in a house with his father.

[Rob Houghton]

Of course, I don't expect Barney's character to remain the same once he's domesticated - I think actually that's my point - that the two books after he finds his father are a let-down because Barney has to - inevitably - change. The 'finding his father' subplot is the strongest subplot in any Blyton series - which is why she really shouldn't have listened to the 'pester power' of her readers!

[Courtenay]

The 'finding his father' subplot is the strongest subplot in any Blyton series - which is why she really shouldn't have listened to the 'pester power' of her readers!

And I'll never have the thrill of that revelation myself, thanks to all the spoilers I've run across on these forums. But as The Rockingdown Mystery has disappointed me so badly twice, I've never been able to bring myself to read the rest of the series anyway...

[Rob Houghton]

As a child I started the series by reading 'The Rilloby Fair Mystery' - my second-favourite title in the series after Rubadub - I loved it, and I've read it several times since. I love the atmosphere - the old-fashioned feeling, the family details of the Linton's house, the comedy surrounding Great Uncle Robert and Snubby and the repercussions of his made-up mysteries. Its a great book! I highly recommend you reading it if you get the chance.

I read 'Rockingdown Mystery' quite a while after Rilloby Fair - and I was bitterly disappointed in it. I like the atmosphere of the abandoned rooms etc, and its interesting to read of Barney's first appearance and his back-story, but for me its pretty weak in other ways.