Five Go To Demon's Rocks

[Katharine]

I know being a lover of the Betty Maxey editions I have no freedom of speech, but may I ask Katharine why you are reading such a modern version of Demons Rocks?

Ha ha - very good question Pete. I'm not sure what illustrations my original copy has, (it is somewhere in my piling/filing system), but actually this updated version from 1997 does have Eileen Soper inside.

It is part of a box set I bought from a charity shop a year or two back. Although I knew they would probably be modernised, I wanted to have a complete set of FF books that match. Of course it now means I must have at least 3 editions of most of the Famous Five books.

[pete9012S]

I understand Katharine. I have a full set of Soper's and a full set of Maxey's!
The Maxey's are my era and the Soper's represent the golden age.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I can also feel the thrill the children must have felt at the idea of going to live in a lighthouse for a few days.

The idea of staying in a lighthouse appealed to me strongly. The year I read Five Go to Demon's Rocks, aged nine, our school trip turned out to be a day at South Stack Lighthouse in Anglesey (followed by a paddle in the sea at Trearddur Bay). I couldn't have been more excited if the teacher had said we were going to the moon!

[Fiona1986]

There's a house for rent across the water from us - it comes with a listed lighthouse (no longer in use) in the garden.

https://www.citylets.co.uk/property-ren ... d6-516013/

Not that I'm in the market to rent a house but it was £1400 a month!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Looks great, Fiona!

[StephenC]

A lot of mixed comments about Demon's Rocks, and that's fair enough. Some interesting comments about the inconsistencies, and yes, there were a few. The use of a lighthouse as a plot device was a good one, but the character of Tinker was way too annoying for me. And the monkey Mischief, was a rehash of Miranda from the Barney series. Demon's Rocks was published in 1961, and the Famous Five series had arguably reached its use by date, by then. Get Into A Fix was certainly the best of the late era FF books, in my view. Banshee Towers was published in the same year, and is almost universally regarded as the worst of the FFO series books. However, Shock For The Secret Seven, which was also published in 1961, was in my view, the best of the late era Secret Seven books, and a real contrast with Demon's Rocks and Banshee Towers. So Enid was still up to the task of turning out some good books, as late as 1961. The plot device of internal squabbling in the Secret Seven, and Jack leaving the SS, was a brilliant idea, even if the dog thieving was a rehash from Go Ahead, Secret Seven.

Getting back to Demon's Rocks, the use of a lighthouse as a plot device was a great idea, up there with the houseboat scenario in The Boy Next Door, but the character of Tinker Hayling was a real letdown, I thought. Just imagine how the book could have turned out if Tinker and his father Professor Haylng, had been replaced with much more appealing characters, like the return of Berta and her father, from Plenty Of Fun, for example. And an ideal opportunity to bring back Ragamuffin Jo for one more time, to help the FIve, would have helped elevate Demon's Rocks, as well, in my opinion. But Demon's Rocks does have its saving graces. It was the last FF book in which KIrrin Cottage featured to any extent, and was pretty much Uncle Quentin's final appearance, as I recall. Although I quite enjoyed Mystery To Solve, I think most people would have been happy if the FF series had ended with Demon's Rocks, and bring down the curtain after nineteen books.

[Lucky Star]

I agree with much of Stephen's comment. The lighthouse was a great idea but Tinker and Mischief were just irritating. However I still think Demon's Rocks was the last great FF book. It had everything that we associate with the Five. A lighthouse, a storm, smugglers, wreckers, hidden treasure, great coastal seaside atmosphere. I always thought it was a very exciting story with plenty of action. As a child it was one of my favourites. Ad an adult I see the flaws but it was better than Finniston Farm and would prove to be better than Mystery to Solve and the dire Together Again.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I rather like Tinker - he's so full of energy. As for Mischief, the idea of having a monkey for a pet (one that was free to wander but would always come back to you) sounded delightful to me as a child. What with a pet monkey, a lighthouse and long-lost treasure, I longed to step into the story and join the characters. I just knew I'd feel at home there.

[dsr]

It's understandable that Enid Blyton made more mistakes when she began to suffer from dementia although it's not uncommon to find continuity errors in long-running series, especially when each title is typically written over the course of a week or even a few days (as was the case with Enid Blyton), with other unrelated books being written in between. Even in early Famous Five books we have the Alf/James and Joan/Joanna slip-ups, not to mention the Kirrin surname confusion and the suggestion that the mother of Julian, Dick and Anne is Fanny's sister (as well as their father being Quentin's brother). There are inconsistencies in Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine series too (e.g. a major character's eyes changing colour) and in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series (e.g. Bridget ages more quickly than her siblings). I find these little oddities quite fun and they don't prevent me enjoying the stories tremendously.

I suspect Ransome's Bridget was a deliberate inconsistency - if she was to have a significant part to play in Secret Water, she had to be older. I think, from memory, that she aged in between We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea, and Secret Water, set only a few weeks later. I seem to remember her reaction to the clogs and the kitten were more like 5 years old than 7?

I agree that EB could expect to be inconsistent - but as Katherine pointed out, why didn't her publishers get them properly proof read? The money she must have been generating, I'm sure they could have appointed a competent professional to spot these things. Maybe Enid didn't care - she was interested in rattling good yarns with plot lines, and (as Pontius Pilate almost said) what she had written, she had written. I dare say she was too busy writing the next half dozen books to go back and edit!

[dsr]

I think I'm in the minority that I liked both Finniston Farm and Demon's Rocks. (Billycock Hill was the one I didn't like.) Finniston Farm had the treasure and the bullying of Junior (I dare say I shouldn't have enjoyed that, but his behaviour really was beyond the pale for a B&B at that time!) and the twins - I always had a soft spot for identical twins. And Demon's Rocks had more treasure and above all, a lighthouse.

Every now and then I look at lighthouses for holiday rents. There aren't many, and they cost a bomb. But the idea of living in a round building with windows on all four sides, possibly cut off full time or part time with a causeway, and a balcony up at the top near the light - sounds lovely. Pointless spending the money, though, because once I had got there I would read books or go in and out exactly as I would with any other holiday accommodation. It's a little pipe-dream, not a serious hope.

But a book in a lighthouse? Lovely. (For anyone that never read Antonia Forest's The Marlows and the Traitor, there is no more perfect example fo the lighthouse mystery/adventure story.)

[timv]

There are one or two unexpected changes to the characters in some earlier Blyton books too, which I suspect were done either to bring back a popular character who readers had asked for more of - with Enid probably not giving the awkward question of why they had vanished and then come back again in a sudden 'plot swerve' much thought, having her mind on the plots not on consistency. The main example I can think of is Pam in the St Clare's series - she leaves the school just before the book with Claudine (ie in the Fourth Form) then reappears in the Fifth Form book, and is spoken of as a possible future Head Girl but too young to be chosen at once when the twins are chosen instead. Possibly she was seen by Enid as a way to get the more shy and less outgoing readers to engage with the series and once she'd been written out they had no major character to look up to.

There's also an inconsistency in the Malory Towers series over how it is that Felicity joins the junior (First) form for the final, summer term of the academic year of Darrell and co's Fourth Year (after missing two terms due to illness). But in the next book, on the first term of the next academic year in September, all the First Years appear to be still down in that year with her, not moving up to the Second Form as Darrell and co move up to the Fifth Form . Logically, only F and a few younger girls would have stayed in the First Year. But I didn't notice this at the time, and no doubt the storyline came first - possibly Enid didn't even notice the mistake as she was too busy writing.

Malcolm Saville also played around with the Morton twins' ages, as they are around six at the start of the Lone Pine series (when David and Tom are sixteen, with Jon later appearing to be the same age, and Peter/ Petronella and Penny are fifteen. By the end of the series - written over 30 years later but only set a few years later - the boys are around nineteen/twenty and Peter is eighteen but the twins only appear to be around eleven and are still talking in their trademark 'babyish' manner. But I suspect that that was done as MS liked to show them as being much younger and living in their own world with language and 'backchat' to their seniors to match this, and having them age consistently would have made them seem more babyish. They were apparently based on his own children.

I noticed the Bridget anomaly in the later Ransome books too when I first read Secret Water, and assumed that it was done to draw in younger readers. Bridget was apparently based on the real life younger sister of the Altounyan children, the basic model for the 'Swallows' (especially Titty and Roger), who was much younger than her siblings. Bridget was the real name of the girl she was based on, and the real B popped up later from time to time in interviews and books about Ransome as far as Christina Hardyment's book 'AR and Captain Flint's Trunk' which I read in the ?1990s.

[Moonraker]

I rather like Tinker - he's so full of energy. As for Mischief, the idea of having a monkey for a pet (one that was free to wander but would always come back to you) sounded delightful to me as a child.

The idea of having a monkey as a pet is pretty terrible, with today's knowledge of animal welfare. The stories on television's Monkey World of young apes/primates being snatched from their habitat by illegal pet traders are real eye openers. However, reading these antics as a child presented no such problems to me. I am surprised that these creatures haven't been replaced by other pets in modern editions. I know in years gone by, monkeys were kept as pets - indeed an ancestor kept one in the far-past. Enid writes of Mischief and Miranda as being extremely happy, however in reality that wasn't the case.

As for Tinker, along with Snubby, two of Enid's most irritating characters, in my opinion.

[Splodj]

Perhaps Enid was against proof reading to avoid giving credence to the rumour that she did not write the books alone.

[Courtenay]

and the suggestion that the mother of Julian, Dick and Anne is Fanny's sister (as well as their father being Quentin's brother).

Just off topic slightly, it's not unknown for that to happen in real life — siblings from one family both marrying siblings from another. My grandfather's two oldest brothers, Bill and Ern, married two sisters, Dot and Edna, so their respective children are double cousins, related on both sides of their family! But I suspect in the case of the Kirrins, Enid just didn't think it out very well. I know we've discussed other instances where she seems to lose track of which side of the family is related to whom, like in The Rilloby Fair Mystery, where Great-uncle Robert is a Lynton, i.e. he must be Roger and Diana's father's uncle, and yet it's their mother who reminisces on him taking her to see old things as a child.

[Lucky Star]

I think I'm in the minority that I liked both Finniston Farm and Demon's Rocks. (Billycock Hill was the one I didn't like.) Finniston Farm had the treasure and the bullying of Junior (I dare say I shouldn't have enjoyed that, but his behaviour really was beyond the pale for a B&B at that time!) and the twins - I always had a soft spot for identical twins. And Demon's Rocks had more treasure and above all, a lighthouse.

Then I shall join you in the minority. I love both books too and also dislike Billycock Hill! I did once look at a lighthouse as holiday accommodation too but, as you say, the cost was just horrific and I dropped the idea pretty much instantly.