Merlin Bay

by Richmal Crompton

"She glanced at her watch. They would be in Merlin Bay in less than half an hour now. Her heart began to beat more quickly. Something was waiting for her at Merlin Bay. She didn't know what it was yet, but she would know soon-in a day, in a week, perhaps. Certainly, when she passed this spot again at the end of the visit, she would know why Michael had wanted her to go there."

So begins Mrs. Paget's month-long holiday as she journeys with the rest of her family to visit her grown-up daughter Pen and her grandchildren, who have moved to Cornwall to reap the benefits of the fresh Cornish air.

But teeming beneath the calm surface of seaside life lies a whole world of secrets, infatuations, hopes and dreams. Over the course of their stay, visitors and residents of Merlin Bay become entangled in each other's lives, disrupting the stability of Pen's seemingly calm domestic life.

From the elderly Mrs. Paget, who visited the bay on her honeymoon nearly fifty years ago but who has never returned, to Pen's teenage daughter Stella, struggling to find her place in the world and feeling her first pangs of desire whilst her younger siblings play innocent childhood games on the beach, Crompton skilfully depicts the trials and tribulations of British domestic life. Will the hopes and desires of each family member be realized by the end of their stay? And what secret will Mrs. Paget unearth?

Richmal Crompton's adult novels are an absolute delight and every bit as charming as her beloved Just William series. A nostalgic treat for fans of the gentler brand of interwar fiction, this is the perfect heritage read for fans of 1930s fiction at its best.

228 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Richmal Crompton Lamburn was initially trained as a schoolmistress but later became a popular English writer, best known for her Just William series of books, humorous short stories, and to a lesser extent adult fiction books.

Crompton's fiction centres around family and social life, dwelling on the constraints that they place on individuals while also nurturing them. This is best seen in her depiction of children as puzzled onlookers of society's ways. Nevertheless, the children, particularly William and his Outlaws, almost always emerge triumphant.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book brought about a great disillusionment for me. I had been so excited that Bello, the print on demand imprint of Pan Macmillan, was making available again a whole slew of novels by Richmal Crompton -- books whose original editions are almost unobtainable on the second hand market, and yet which I've found quite readable and engrossing. The back cover of this particular reprint gushes, "A nostalgic treat for fans of the gentler brand of interwar fiction, this is the perfect heritage read for fans of 1930s fiction at its best." Although I find the notion of being a fan of "heritage" reads slightly embarrassing, I tend to agree with the sentiment. I've bought five of the reprints, with their appealing decorative covers, and to my further pleasure, thanks to the fluctuating prices on Amazon, I had the lucky good timing to get them for around $7 each. This is the third one that I've read.

Merlin Bay opens promisingly. An elderly woman and her unmarried middle-aged daughter are traveling down to Cornwall to the home of married daughter Pen and her six children.

"A group of children sitting on a gate waved as the train went past, and Mrs. Paget leant forward to wave her handkerchief in reply. She kept her handkerchief on her knee for the purpose. She had already waved to five or six groups of children since the journey began. Every time she did it, Florence, her daughter, who was sitting opposite, looked up from her knitting in disapproval."

At this point, I settled in with a contented sigh. There is also plenty to enjoy in the rest of the book. I particularly liked the parts about the six children who have rich lives of their own (with the exception of the part about the oldest girl who has left school, and whose predictable story line -- an infatuation with a famous author who asks to paint her portrait -- left me underwhelmed). My disillusionment came about when a neighbor with a severely intellectually disabled daughter was introduced. My heart sank when this young woman was described in terms nearly identical to those used to describe a severely disabled girl in The Holiday, the Crompton novel I previously read, which was published six years earlier. The kicker is that these two girls even have the same name, Agnes. In my review of the earlier book, I described Crompton as having many characters who she spun like tops to see how they'd bump into each other. Here it's as though she took one of the tops from an earlier book and inserted it into the set from this book, and thought no one would notice! I guess the reason why the old copies of her novels for grown ups are so hard to find is that they went out of print almost instantly. I dare say she never imagined that anyone eighty years in the future would read these two books almost back to back. It makes one think that perhaps there is some truth to the idea that an extremely prolific novelist is inherently not a great novelist, a criticism which I've usually felt to be unfair. In any case, my anticipation of the novels I've yet to read is significantly diminished. What additional recycled material will I find? Apart from the blatant self-plagiarism, I found the part about Agnes distressing because both Agneses share the same fate: death. Apparently the only reasonable outcome for this type of situation. I'd like to think I would find this distasteful even if I didn't have a disabled child of my own. At least in The Holiday, Agnes' father, who had previously felt only loathing and disgust towards his daughter is allowed an epiphany of realizing he actually loves her before she dies. The Agnes in Merlin Bay plunges to her death off a cliff still entirely loathed and disgusted by her older brother, the father's counterpart in this book.

Despite my great dismay, I've given the book three stars, because if I hadn't read The Holiday first, that's probably about how I would have rated this one.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully wrought, engaging, and rather underrated novel. I did not enjoy Merlin Bay quite as much as The Holiday, but it was filled with a cast of fascinating characters, and did throw up a couple of surprises along the way. Merlin Bay is a charming, quaint, and rather funny read, which proved a perfect choice for a beautifully warm summer's day.

[Roger Pettit · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has come as a pleasant surprise to me to realise that there was clearly much more to Richmal Crompton than the ‘Just William’ children’s books for which she is famous (and which I still enjoy - in audio form, narrated by the incomparable Martin Jarvis). A friend who is a voracious reader recently gave me copies of several of the forty or so novels for adults that this versatile and prolific author also wrote. ‘Merlin Bay’ is one of them. It’s a gentle, largely unremarkable, well-written novel about love, marriage, motherhood and family relationships that perhaps has slightly more to it than meets the eye. Published in 1939, it’s very readable and the characterisation is excellent. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s pedigree, the joys and disappointments of being a child are beautifully delineated in its pages and the dialogue is realistic and convincing.

Dolly Paget, a grandmother in her 70s, returns to Merlin Bay, the village in Cornwall where she had her honeymoon with her late husband Michael. On his deathbed ten years ago, Michael had urged her to revisit the place. One of their three children, Pen, now lives there. Pen is the overly doting mother of five children whose ages range from five to seventeen. Her husband Charles lives and works away from home but, along with other members of the family, also visits Merlin Bay during Mrs Paget’s holiday there. That is the simple setting of a story in which love, infatuation, infidelity, tragedy and human frailty feature heavily.

‘Merlin Bay’ is by no means a very original novel and it’s not great literature. That said, it’s skilfully constructed and is an enjoyable and agreeable, if undemanding, read. I enjoyed it and, as a result, look forward to devouring some of the other adult novels of Ms Crompton that were kindly gifted to me.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea how prolific Crompton was outside of her William stories. This is a surprisingly modern take on marriage, motherhood and love published in 1935. Showing that in so many ways we haven’t changed at all, and society hasn’t changed that much either. A Grandmother goes back to the Cornwall village where she honeymooned 50 years before, her disparate and very different family gather there for a month over Summer. A secret long hidden reveals itself.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs Paget is travelling to Merlin Bay in Cornwall with her timid unmarried elder daughter Florence to stay with her younger daughter Pen. Mrs Paget has not been to Merlin Bay since she spent her honeymoon there fifty years before, where something mysterious happened to her husband. Pen is entirely absorbed in her six children, her husband Charles, who works in London, can come only for occasional holidays. And Mrs Paget’s son Martin is expected from Malaya. Lots of relationships of various kinds are formed at Merlin Bay, and several lives are changed. Some of the characters are well drawn, others I found a bit too exaggerated. Pen’s children are all likeable characters, they are more interesting than the adults. The frustrated spinster desperate to get married is a bit over the top. And Florence’s silliness is rather overdone. And there is a rather brutal portrayal of a mentally handicapped girl which is a bit disturbing. Although entertaining enough, I did not entirely warm to this one.