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The Autumn People
What Romilly Williams doesn't know -- but the reader, through a lengthy flashback, does -- is that she's fated to live out the spell placed on her great grandmother and namesake by handsome, evil Rodger Graham before his sudden disappearance.
On her summer vacation on the Scottish island of Karasay, Romilly falls in love with the ghost of the earlier Romilly's beau Jocelyn Parsons and is haunted by the long-dead Rodger, until she finds his skeleton in the cave where he practiced black magic and completes the exorcism with the help of eccentric old Miss Minnie.
On her summer vacation on the Scottish island of Karasay, Romilly falls in love with the ghost of the earlier Romilly's beau Jocelyn Parsons and is haunted by the long-dead Rodger, until she finds his skeleton in the cave where he practiced black magic and completes the exorcism with the help of eccentric old Miss Minnie.
166 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
1 person is currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Ruth M. Arthur
27 books48 followersWorking name of UK writer Ruth Mabel Arthur Huggins, long active as a children's author, her career beginning with Friendly Stories (collection, 1932). Most of her early work, like the Brownie sequence -- The Crooked Brownie (1936), The Crooked Brownie in Town (1942) and The Crooked Brownie at the Seaside (1942) -- is for younger children, but with Dragon Summer (1962) and A Candle in her Room (1966) she began to write the haunting fantasy-tinged adolescent novels for which she became best known. Often featuring first-person narratives spanning multiple generations filled with echoes of centuries past.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 30, 2019
Like 'A Candle in Her Room' this wonderfully told Ruth M. Arthur story follows different generations of several families on a Scottish island. Beautiful Margery Gill illustrations fit the story and era perfectly.
Divided into four parts this exciting and slightly scary story tells of Romilly Williams who was named after her great Grandmother. Romilly loved to listen to stories and look at old family photos of her ancestors and the island of Karasay where they owned a house. Romilly knew her great Grandmother once had a holiday on Karasay and something happened that made her never want to return. When Romilly gets the chance to spend the summer on the island she discovers some secrets and finds the reason her great Grandmother never returned.
Although there is romance in this story it is very slight, we are not fans of romance. There was a slightly eye rolling moment when Romilly sees Rodger for the first time and gasps and has to hold on to a chair to steady herself due to his good looks. This made us laugh and hopefully this will have taught Romilly not to judge by appearances.
This is an engaging story of family history and relationships, the ghost element of The Autumn People makes this an ideal read for this time of year. We enjoyed the way the story switched between the two Romillys of different generations without it being confusing or frustrating, we liked the way their stories intertwined and the ending was good. Apart from the main plot there were lots of interesting elements, descriptions of nature, characters relationships with siblings, philosophical thoughts about the patterns of life, the continuation and sometimes completion of patterns over generations.
Divided into four parts this exciting and slightly scary story tells of Romilly Williams who was named after her great Grandmother. Romilly loved to listen to stories and look at old family photos of her ancestors and the island of Karasay where they owned a house. Romilly knew her great Grandmother once had a holiday on Karasay and something happened that made her never want to return. When Romilly gets the chance to spend the summer on the island she discovers some secrets and finds the reason her great Grandmother never returned.
Although there is romance in this story it is very slight, we are not fans of romance. There was a slightly eye rolling moment when Romilly sees Rodger for the first time and gasps and has to hold on to a chair to steady herself due to his good looks. This made us laugh and hopefully this will have taught Romilly not to judge by appearances.
This is an engaging story of family history and relationships, the ghost element of The Autumn People makes this an ideal read for this time of year. We enjoyed the way the story switched between the two Romillys of different generations without it being confusing or frustrating, we liked the way their stories intertwined and the ending was good. Apart from the main plot there were lots of interesting elements, descriptions of nature, characters relationships with siblings, philosophical thoughts about the patterns of life, the continuation and sometimes completion of patterns over generations.
October 15, 2018
Romilly Williams had always felt a strong connection to her maternal grandmother, and through her, to her great-grandmother Romilly Graham, for whom she had been named. But it wasn't until her fifteenth summer, when she went to spend her holiday on the northern Scottish island of Karasay, long-time summer retreat of the Graham family, that Romilly realized just how deep that connection was. The first Romilly, known as Millie, had also come to stay at Karasay House as a young woman, arriving in the summer of 1901. Although she was warmly embraced by the younger Grahams, and by neighbor Jocelyn Parsons, with whom she fell in love, Millie found herself threatened and dominated by the malignant Rodger - eldest son of the Graham family, and a practitioner of black magic. Despite the sudden disappearance of Rodger, Millie continued to feel herself bound in some ineffable way to him, and her romance with Jocelyn did not endure.
The second Romilly knew nothing of this when she came to stay at Karasay House with her Gran and Cousin Derwent. Content to roam the island and spend a quiet holiday, Romilly quickly discovered that a malevolent presence - unsuspected by those around her - was haunting the house, manifesting itself as a terrible coldness, and then as the image of a dark and handsome young man. Like her predecessor, Romilly took refuge at Tallows, the summer house of the Parsons family, slipping into a sort of ghostly limbo-land, where she encountered the Autumn People - the ghosts of those long-ago Parsons and Grahams from the summer of 1901. When she eventually stumbled upon Rodger's secret lair, she set in motion a series of events that freed Karasay House from Rodger's ghost...
Ruth M. Arthur delivers another compelling story, exploring the links between the past, present and future, and the ways in which patterns formed in one generation may be completed in the next. She revisits another of her great themes - the exorcising of an unquiet presence and/or ghost by a descendant (also seen in the characters of Perdita and Alys in The Saracen Lamp ). This novel is in many ways counter-cultural for the time of its publication (1973), in that it treats Romilly's longing for order and fondness for patterns as natural, and depicts her less as a rebel against the past than a continuation of it.
The second Romilly knew nothing of this when she came to stay at Karasay House with her Gran and Cousin Derwent. Content to roam the island and spend a quiet holiday, Romilly quickly discovered that a malevolent presence - unsuspected by those around her - was haunting the house, manifesting itself as a terrible coldness, and then as the image of a dark and handsome young man. Like her predecessor, Romilly took refuge at Tallows, the summer house of the Parsons family, slipping into a sort of ghostly limbo-land, where she encountered the Autumn People - the ghosts of those long-ago Parsons and Grahams from the summer of 1901. When she eventually stumbled upon Rodger's secret lair, she set in motion a series of events that freed Karasay House from Rodger's ghost...
Ruth M. Arthur delivers another compelling story, exploring the links between the past, present and future, and the ways in which patterns formed in one generation may be completed in the next. She revisits another of her great themes - the exorcising of an unquiet presence and/or ghost by a descendant (also seen in the characters of Perdita and Alys in The Saracen Lamp ). This novel is in many ways counter-cultural for the time of its publication (1973), in that it treats Romilly's longing for order and fondness for patterns as natural, and depicts her less as a rebel against the past than a continuation of it.
November 14, 2018
Romilly Williams is the second person in her family tree with her name. The first, Romilly's great-grandmother, was known as Millie, and she vacationed on the island of Karasay just once as a young woman and never returned, owing to a strange and painful experience that cost her the love of her life and possibly a piece of her soul as well. The second Romilly has grown up hearing stories about Karasay from Millie's daughter, her Gran, who herself has always wondered about the reasons her mother never joined the family for their island vacations. When Gran and Romilly finally have the chance to visit Karasay, neither realizes the role Romilly will play in finally setting right the wrongs of Millie's past.
This novel is told in a very straightforward way, relating first Millie's point of view in the summer of 1901 and then Romilly's "present-day" (early 1970's) experiences. Though the storytelling is quite linear and ordinary, however, the events of the story are unusual and unsettling. What happens between Millie and a distant relative, Roger, incorporates elements of the supernatural, as does Romilly's journey of discovery toward what happened to Roger and how it affected her great-grandmother. Like When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson (1967), The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1958), and Seven Stories Up by Laurel Snyder (2014), this novel shows how the past impacts the future, but also how the future might reach back through time and remedy the past.
Though The Autumn People is not a Halloween story per se, the title and the involvement of ghosts in some segments of the plot make it an appropriate read for getting into the spirit of the holiday. There is probably not enough actual haunting in this book to please true fans of ghost stories, but for readers like me, who typically don't like to be scared too much, this novel is plenty troubling at points even if it is pretty clear from the outset that there will be a happy resolution.
This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.
This novel is told in a very straightforward way, relating first Millie's point of view in the summer of 1901 and then Romilly's "present-day" (early 1970's) experiences. Though the storytelling is quite linear and ordinary, however, the events of the story are unusual and unsettling. What happens between Millie and a distant relative, Roger, incorporates elements of the supernatural, as does Romilly's journey of discovery toward what happened to Roger and how it affected her great-grandmother. Like When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson (1967), The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1958), and Seven Stories Up by Laurel Snyder (2014), this novel shows how the past impacts the future, but also how the future might reach back through time and remedy the past.
Though The Autumn People is not a Halloween story per se, the title and the involvement of ghosts in some segments of the plot make it an appropriate read for getting into the spirit of the holiday. There is probably not enough actual haunting in this book to please true fans of ghost stories, but for readers like me, who typically don't like to be scared too much, this novel is plenty troubling at points even if it is pretty clear from the outset that there will be a happy resolution.
This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.
May 18, 2011
I'm beginning to think that I only truly love 3 or 4 of Arthur's books, and the residual glow has wrapped around the others in hindsight. This story of Romilly, granddaughter of Romilly known as Millie, can only be described as slight. There's just not a lot of flesh for these oh so spooky bones. The flashbacks are powerful but I found the evil curiously unexplored. Perhaps that gives it some power- the reader can fill out the ugliness, I suppose, but for me, reading it at this terrible remove from adolescence, I simply couldn't be bothered to do so.
I'm not trying to damn this book with faint praise- not at all. It's simply slighter than I remembered, less weighty. It's still a ripping good yarn.
I'm not trying to damn this book with faint praise- not at all. It's simply slighter than I remembered, less weighty. It's still a ripping good yarn.
January 1, 2013
love this author. discovered her when I had the ambition to read all the titles in the children's section of the library and started at A. love the Margery Gill illustrations about as much as the books.
September 21, 2007
I read this and Mabel Esther Allan's Time to Go Back close together and noticed many similarities; both are outstanding.
July 16, 2014
One of my all time favorite books. Creepy, mysterious, perfect.
October 7, 2021
Reminded me of Nancy Drew. Written for a teen girl, about an independent teen girl who has no fear. Spooky, not too complicated.
*This book very randomly made itself known to me - I had requested about 20 “autumn” books for children from the library (for Nels) and this appeared within that stack. It’s a stacks copy, first edition from 1973, complete with due date card, and it smells wonderfully like old library book.
*This book very randomly made itself known to me - I had requested about 20 “autumn” books for children from the library (for Nels) and this appeared within that stack. It’s a stacks copy, first edition from 1973, complete with due date card, and it smells wonderfully like old library book.
March 27, 2022
A blast from the past! Read this years and years ago as a teenager and it has not lost any of the magic. This is how stories should be written. Magical, amazing and just great. Love it. A few modern day authors could take a few lessons from reading this.
October 4, 2022
So melodramatic!
October 10, 2022
Nostalgic and spooky. I loved this so much!
July 16, 2023
D. fiction, YA; Scotland; two time periods; creepy; from stash, discard
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews