Adventure May Be Anywhere

Ruth Manning-Sanders

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Four cousins spend an adventure-filled summer on the Cornish coast.

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Hardcover, 262 pages

Published 1939 by Frederick A. Stokes Company (first published 1938)

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Apr 26, 2018 Chris Otto rated it really liked it

This is a light, pleasant novel by Ruth Manning-Sanders, almost certainly aimed at younger readers. In my mind, it represents the start of key transition in her long writing career, which went something like this:

-- Stage 1: Poetry and serious novels aimed at adults (roughly 1920-1935)
-- Stage 2: Novels aimed at children and teenagers, plus a handful of well-researched history books (1938-1957)
-- Stage 3: Endless wonderful collections of retold folk and fairy tales (1958-1988)

(Any ONE of those This is a light, pleasant novel by Ruth Manning-Sanders, almost certainly aimed at younger readers. In my mind, it represents the start of key transition in her long writing career, which went something like this:

-- Stage 1: Poetry and serious novels aimed at adults (roughly 1920-1935)
-- Stage 2: Novels aimed at children and teenagers, plus a handful of well-researched history books (1938-1957)
-- Stage 3: Endless wonderful collections of retold folk and fairy tales (1958-1988)

(Any ONE of those three stages, of course, would be a respectable entire career for an author.)

Her novels for the younger set, including "Adventure May Be Anywhere," show her love for folding folklore, legends and mythology into her storytelling, a precursor to simplying retelling those source tales later in her career, to great acclaim. This novel, in particular, is packed with folklore, particularly that which is specific to Cornwall and thus fairly obscure in 2018.

"Adventure May Be Anywhere" is a pleasant read, full of ... childhood summer adventures without any real concern of lasting physical harm, as breathtaking as some of those adventures might be. (This was a different time perhaps, with children taking boats out to sea, daring cliffs, dangling into mine shafts and the like. Perhaps some of the scrapes that children survive are a bit exaggerated and outrageous, even the for time, but it lends itself to what I think would be a thrilling novel for younger readers, then and now.) The novel's protagonists are 12-year-old Rebecca (the narrator), Jimmy, Sally and Bang.

A cautionary note: There is some moderately unpleasant anti-Semitism in one section toward the end of the book. Even though it's relayed as "old folklore," that doesn't forgive it at all. I don't by any means think it's a reason to avoid the book, but it's an important teachable moment, depending on the age of the reader. Beyond that, there are of course some aspects of character, plot, and language that are reflective of life in England nearly 80 years ago.

The characters from this novel appeared again, a few years later, in "Mystery at Penmarth." Similar approach, although that one has a plot that extends throughout the narrative, rather than the one-and-done episodic chapters in "Adventure May Be Anywhere." ...more

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About Ruth Manning-Sanders

Ruth Manning-Sanders

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Ruth Manning-Sanders, youngest daughter of an English minister, describes her childhood as “extraordinarily happy. . . with kind and understanding parents and any amount of freedom.” She read omnivorously, and she and her two sisters wrote and acted their own plays. A Shakespeare scholar at Manchester University, she later married Cornish artist George Manning-Sanders. They began married life in a ...more