Madam, want to talk about author Mary Stewart? discussion
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Wildfire at Midnight
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Wildfire at Midnight -- Chaps. 1-5
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There was a lot of smoking in MWYT. That, and nylon nighties. :)
Jeannette wrote: "There was a lot of smoking in MWYT. That, and nylon nighties. :)"I agree, the smoking was way OTT.
Lol...yes, smoking was everywhere in the book. Although, IMHO, it reminds the reader of the era that this novel was set in and how common smoking was.
Bump! Some great thoughts here, and some interesting guesses as to the murderer.
The smoking comments are cracking me up! I wrote a short story in high school where the heroine smoked, and my English teacher wrote on it, "Et tu, Brute", which of course as a 13 year old was over my head until I looked it up. I had obviously been reading way too much Mary Stewart! The funny thing is that I have never smoked.
This is one of my favorite Mary Stewart settings. So wild. I found this guide to the Cuillin walks. It has maps and guides to pronunciation. (I was having a lot of trouble wrapping my brain around the Gaelic place names.) Hubert Hay, being a Sorbo Bouncer, would have adapted quite nicely to writing internet guides. https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/munro...
Here is Blaven. No wonder everyone seems uneasy about it!
What a stunning picture! Now I have a very clear image of it in my head. And thanks for the link Hana!
It looks too beautiful to be real. Isn't it odd that the ma n-made building enhances the utter wildness of the whole landscape?
Yes--the cottages seem so small and insignificant. But so much depends on the lighting and the weather. On sunny summer days many of the photos I've seen of Blaven hikers make it look like an ugly pile of slag. (Of course that also makes for rather hellish walking (or scrambling!)
I have been to Skye once just a couple of years ago but it was such a whirlwind trip that we just skirted the edge of it. So, we did not see the Cuillin mountains. How I wish I could go back now. The first time I read this book I knew almost nothing about Skye so I am enjoying this re-read now that I have been there.
I never realised Blaven was a real mountain. I went to Skye for my honeymoon and of course brought Wildfire with me AND made my new husband read it, but we were staying at the wrong end of the island and I didn't feel I could keep insisting we head for the Cuillins. (In any case I am very much at the Marcia Maling level of climbing and would only have been able to glimpse the mountains in the distance from our comfortable car.That is an amazing picture of the mountain and really helps to complete the picture in my head.
I love the introduction to the assembled characters in the hotel and how MS manages to sketch them in and make them all different - even the Cowdray-Simpsons - with such economy. It's such an important element of a whodunit to differentiate the characters and not even Agatha Christie manages it every time.
Annabel wrote: "I love the introduction to the assembled characters in the hotel and how MS manages to sketch them in and make them all different - even the Cowdray-Simpsons - with such economy. It's such an impor..."Yes! There's nothing worse than the "wait, who's this guy?" feeling which makes you have to go back through the pages to find him!
Hana wrote: "Here is Blaven. No wonder everyone seems uneasy about it!"
Wow that is gorgeous! I'm up to around Chapter 8 now. Slow start for me, but Stewart's writing has really pulled me in now.
Can someone solve this for me? Gianetta introduces Marcia to Nicholas. ("Another old friend, darling?") But surely, Marcia and Nicholas have both already been at the hotel for several days. I've always been confused by this, but reading it again now has brought it back to me!
I figured Marcia and Nicholas had met each other. Marcia's comment seemed aimed more at Gianetta, trying to get her to talk more about the connection. Just Marcia being nosy Marcia.
Are the lady teachers together? I think I missed that the first time through.
Annabel wrote: "Can someone solve this for me? Gianetta introduces Marcia to Nicholas. ("Another old friend, darling?") But surely, Marcia and Nicholas have both already been at the hotel for several days. I've al..."Nicholas only arrived the previous night, as Marcia says in Chapter 2, though he's been there before. She thinks he looks like a writer, "all dark and damn-your-eyes"
but he apparently spent the day fishing, so she's not been introduced. :-)
Amy wrote: "Are the lady teachers together? I think I missed that the first time through."Marcia thought so, but I'm not sure Mary Stewart ever answers the question definitively.
Yes, I agree with Tadiana. It is never made explicit. I think also that many women in post-war Britain found themselves alone, and their only possibility for independence was to share a flat or a house with other women who had lost someone. I remember my Art teacher shared a house with our history teacher when I was at school. Miss Paget had lost her fiancé during WW2 and Mrs Simpson her husband. Miss Paget remained single, but Mrs Simpson remarried just after I went to University. They lived together for about 5 years and went on holiday together. No one ever thought they were gay - whereas I think most of us knew which teachers were. It never seemed a big deal back in the 1960s.
The question is never answered explicitly but Marion's possessive attitude to Roberta and irritable reaction whenever she talks to someone else seemed a strong hint. But then of course Marion's feelings are complex and perhaps beyond easy categorisation...
Annabel wrote: "The question is never answered explicitly but Marion's possessive attitude to Roberta and irritable reaction whenever she talks to someone else seemed a strong hint. But then of course Marion's fee..."And Marion was apparently very attracted to Roderick.
Yes, that was what I meant but couldn't remember where it fell in the book and didn't want to perpetuate a spoiler. But perhaps she was bisexual, or just possessive about Roberta as a friend, or just admiring of Roderick as a fellow-climber...
I think, too, that when they talk about her nastiness, they don't mean it in a sexual way, but rather that it's her whole personality which is angry and off-putting. She's a bully full of insecurities, and that's why Gianetta has a bit of pity for her, while everyone else steers as far away from her as they can.
That is quite a striking image! Started on Monday while commuting. It did feel a little like an Agatha Christie but with a difference. So far so good
I got my copy at an antique store. It was published in 1967. The cover price is sixty cents. The cover depicts Gianetta dressed in a trench coat and a red dress and wearing red heels standing at the edge of the water. So cool and stylish, but very impractical.I found it interesting that models were called "mannequins."
It struck me, after the wild chase across southern France, and all the various locales in MWYT, that Wildfire is just the opposite. The action all takes place in one (albeit dramatic) locale, and much of it in the hotel itself. All those tensions and undercurrents! Like the awkwardness of Gianetta’s first meeting with Nicholas. What a great piece of imagery, commonplace politenesses being the greaves and cuirasses that arm the naked nerve. Gianetta asserting that she doesn’t have to worry about being the cause of Nicholas’ bad mood, that she doesn’t have to care… is she trying to convince herself? It does fill out the picture of a marriage that went badly wrong.
This book’s not only strongly oriented to one place but to a very specific time - the coronation, Everest. A definite time capsule, that summary of the day’s news near the start of Ch 4!
Strong personalities, toxic relationships, a dreadful mystery, and the amazing, dramatic Scottish landscape - all these elements combine to make this an exciting adventure to read about. I'm glad the novel is set in Scotland this time, just for a change of pace, after reading three MS novels set in France. I find Gianetta's reactions to Nicholas' presence to be strangely unemotional at this point. This afternoon I'll be starting chapter seven.
Linda wrote: "Strong personalities, toxic relationships, a dreadful mystery, and the amazing, dramatic Scottish landscape - all these elements combine to make this an exciting adventure to read about. I'm glad t..."She seems bruised to me. And perhaps trying to maintain a protective shell of indifference.
These first 5 chapters are really well paced and set the story in motion in fine style. I love how this book has the elements of a Golden Age of Detective Fiction mystery like an Agatha Christie, but also the suspense, romance, and beautiful scene-setting that are Mary Stewart's signature. This is her only book that has the murder mystery element and I love it.The sea-weeds, black and rose-red and olive-green, rocked as the salt swell took them, and the smell of the sea drifted up, sharp and exciting. The shore slid past; scree and heather, overhung with summer clouds of birch, flowed by us, and our wake arrowed the silk-smooth water into ripples of copper and indigo.
Gah! So beautiful!
Like Stewart, my husband is a geologist, so I always notice the geology she throws into her books. In these first chapters, we have a reference to geology students camping by a loch with their rock hammers, a reference to the Cuillins being 30 million years old and formed by weathering, and that the Bad Step is made of gabbro. I don't think I've ever read a book that mentions gabbro, lol.
I know I'm not alone in finding Stewart's insta-love somewhat problematic, so I'm always searching for a basis for the relationships that subsequently form. We don't know at this point if she's going to end up with Roderick or Nicholas (or indeed anyone), but I did note for the first time that she goes into some detail about why her marriage to Nicholas broke up: he was suffering from PTSD and she was immature, but they loved each other deeply. I can absolutely see how 4 years of healing in his case, and growth in hers, might result in them believably getting back together.
…the thousand-year-long stretch of a world war that to me was only an adolescent memory hardly denting the surface ofmy life, but to Nicholas was a still-recurring nightmare agony leaving scars on the mind which were then only precariously skinning over. How was I, untouched nineteen, to apprehend the sort of stresses that drove Nicholas?
I find this very compelling.
Her descriptions are wonderful, aren’t they? I find as I read that some passages I have to read over two or three times because they’re just so vivid and/or beautiful. Unusual, and I find it interesting given how often MS writes insta-love, that here we get an example of how it played out in real life, when it didn’t work out. But I agree, Iolanthe. Given the history of the marriage, if they did reunite I would find it believable.
wow, that photo Hana posted upthread is incredible. Blaven is both beautiful and frightening. I was also wondering if the teachers were supposed to be a couple, and still don't know after googling the German word (I assume?) used about them.
Whizzing through the book :0)Stewart is wonderful at setting the scene, both in terms of the cast/players and the setting, usually an impressive location. Real sense of the place - and for us now, of time, especially in this one. I wonder if any tourism organisation ever used her writing as quotes. If not, they missed out
I started the book this morning and have read the first five chapters, found it so engrossing.I loved the introduction of the guests and agree with Iolanthe (message 83 above) that it's like an Agatha Christie mystery. The scene setting is wonderful.
Iolanthe wrote:…the thousand-year-long stretch of a world war that to me was only an adolescent memory hardly denting the surface ofmy life, but to Nicholas was a still-recurring nightmare agony leaving scars on the mind which were then only precariously skinning over. How was I, untouched nineteen, to apprehend the sort of stresses that drove Nicholas?
I find this very compelling.
Well observed, Iolanthe! The tormented hero is such a cliché, and I tend to get rather tired of these dark, brooding fellows who get away with quite awful behaviour because they have something in their past – but Mary Stewart needs only a couple of sentences to make it, as you say, compelling.
I just started this and realized I haven’t read it since I was a teenager, and I don’t remember much about it. It’s almost like discovering a new MS book—what a treat!
Peggy wrote: "I just started this and realized I haven’t read it since I was a teenager, and I don’t remember much about it. It’s almost like discovering a new MS book—what a treat!"Same for me, Peggy. Apart from Thunder on the Right, which the group read a couple of years ago, it’s been ages!
I feel the same way. Doesn't bother me. I'm more interested in what else is going on in the story.
And, Jeanette, I didn't notice the pattern of the smoking in MWYT, but I sure will next time I read it! :)