Madam, want to talk about author Mary Stewart? discussion
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Thunder on the Right
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Thunder on the Right -- Chapters 1 thru 5
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Jay
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Jul 05, 2017 08:29PM
Thx. :) I really get hung up on timelines
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I like this line in chapter 1: "Mother and daughter got on very well indeed, with a deep affection founded on almost complete misunderstanding."
Jayanarula and Tadiana - the British were certainly involved from the beginning and all the way through the war. The Korean War started as a UN 'police action' and many UN members were involved from the beginning including Britain and a dozen other countries. Naturally the largest number of troops were American - but Britain alone contributed about 100,000 troops and the Korean War was not simply an American engagement but a world one.
In the BOOK "MASH" (not the TV show or movie) set in Korea the American author/combat surgeon is scathing about the British medics custom of giving all the wounded including the abdominal cases a cup of tea before transporting to the MASH. It of course delayed surgery and contaminated the field. I suspect we Americans did things that equally infuriated the British...
Once again, Mary Stewart is making me hungry...
Karlyne wrote: "Once again, Mary Stewart is making me hungry..."Atleast they havent started smoking yet
There are hardly any cigarettes in this one (comparatively speaking, that is!).
I am through the first five chapters reading very slowly and savoring. I was on the lookout for cigarettes, too, LOL. So far I like Jennifer (or do you think of her as Jenny?) because of how she deals with the arrogant (pretend?!) nun. Imagine how overwhelmed she must feel to have had such a build up to finally meet up with her close family member and then receive such shocking news this way. She is rocked off her balance. But, she stands up for herself and makes the nun explain herself.
I do think of her as Jennifer. She's not as "alive" as other Stewart heroines, maybe, but she has more resources than she's ever given herself credit for and, now that she actually needs to use them, she does!
@Tadiana thanks for the photo of the area. No one does beautiful settings like Mary Stewart! before moving on to chapter 6, I'd like to respond to posts from the past.
Karlyne wrote: "I think she's giving her this dialect so that she sounds comfortable and homey and not patrician as Dona Frederica does. As a contrast, in fact."this makes complete sense. I remember being puzzled by her (Sister Maria Louisa's) speech but I did understand she was the "anti-Dona Frederica" so, the opposite of patrician and someone Jennifer could rely on to speak the truth!
her accent is described as "a thick Midi twang": does anyone know what that is? I googled a bit and got nothing.
HJ wrote: "I'm behind in reading this one (re-reading, as with all the MS suspense novels).I love how the atmosphere builds as Jennifer is walking to the convent, with the dramatic incident of the boy with ..."
I agree with all of post #38 by @HJ someone I hope still reads/posts here.
the description of the garden especially is wonderful and I have no problem imagining it with sights, sounds, and scent. "Not a bird sang, but the air was loud with bees".
about to start chapter six and as I have vowed to pay attention to her chapter titles, I see "les presages" means The omens!
I'm so glad you're reading this, Jackie!
MS does really evocative descriptions. I sometimes re-read only those bits whereas inmost other books scenery description is something I rush through.
This is a fun, twisty mystery, if a little overwrought. But I love Mary Stewart and I’m glad you’re enjoying this one!
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "This is a fun, twisty mystery, if a little overwrought. But I love Mary Stewart and I’m glad you’re enjoying this one!"Certainly an intriguing set-up. So many years since I’ve read this, I can’t remember what happens at all.
Jay wrote: "MS does really evocative descriptions. I sometimes re-read only those bits whereas inmost other books scenery description is something I rush through."Exactly so, Jay and Jackie. They’re one of my favourite things about reading Mary Stewart.
I owe an awful lot of my European geography to Mary Stewart... (and I'm only partially kidding!)
Anyone else think that if Jennifer hadn’t been present (view spoiler)? I thought he made a very convincing case. And that fight...wow! MS doesn’t just write scenery.
I do admire how well she builds tension in a story. And the description of the storm is wonderful, although I thought the whole shaft-of-light image in the farm scene felt rather contrived.
Karlyne wrote: "I owe an awful lot of my European geography to Mary Stewart... (and I'm only partially kidding!)"It was certainly my first MS - (The Moonspinners), which inspired my love of Greece and when I visited Crete, it felt so familiar after reading the book!
Julie wrote: "Anyone else think that if Jennifer hadn’t been present [spoilers removed]? I thought he made a very convincing case. And that fight...wow! MS doesn’t just write scenery.
I do admire how well sh..."
Oops. I’m getting way ahead of Ch 5 here...
Julie, I was just wondering since I've finished chapter five and don't know what you are talking about.almost ready to read/post in the next thread, hopefully tonight.
Julie wrote: "Anyone else think that if Jennifer hadn’t been present [spoilers removed]? I thought he made a very convincing case. And that fight...wow! MS doesn’t just write scenery.
I do admire how well sh..."
Mary Stewart writes tension into her fight scenes that I've never felt before; I'd say only Louis Lamour, in my reading, can match her!
Jackie wrote: "Julie, I was just wondering since I've finished chapter five and don't know what you are talking about.almost ready to read/post in the next thread, hopefully tonight."
It’s so rare for me, not only to be up to speed but ahead of the group, that clearly I got carried away! :)
Having said that, I can’t actually find the next thread! Not sure why.
Karlyne wrote: "Julie wrote: "Anyone else think that if Jennifer hadn’t been present [spoilers removed]? I thought he made a very convincing case. And that fight...wow! MS doesn’t just write scenery.
I do admi..."
Much like Jennifer, I’ve not seen two grown men fight. Nor would I ever want to. The way she writes it is just as I imagine it would be.
@Julie it was on the last page of "buddy reads" and I just bumped it up.I'll be posting more this weekend.
Jackie wrote: "@Julie it was on the last page of "buddy reads" and I just bumped it up.I'll be posting more this weekend."
Thanks Jackie!
Like Tadiana, my cover doesn't have a very fair blonde
Also (nitpicking) the gentians look like large blueberries.Thanks for the pictures of gentians Tadiana - nice to know what they look like.
This is my second time reading Thunder on the Right, and I'm glad to be reading it with the group, since the first time I disliked it extremely, and I'm already liking or at least enjoying it more after scrolling through the last few years' discussions here. I baulked at trying to locate my copy and downloaded the audio version instead – I really like the reader, Ellie Heydon. And the bonus is that I miss out on all those annoying ellipses Tadiana mentioned. What was Stewart's editor thinking of?
It starts off well enough, however, with elegant French food, and I rather like that neat, straightforward method of getting everyone's back story out of the way: just tell it! I look forward to seeing what Abigail will say about that. Another neat device: as in Madam Will You Talk, we have the hotel guests' chat providing hints and clues . . . (Did I just say ellipses are annoying? Moi?)
As Jenny walks off into the hills in the same clothes and shoes she had lunch in, carrying her handbag, however, I'm getting a little worried, and her impressions strike me as overwritten, even Gothic, in a Mysteries of Udolpho kind of way.
There was a query in the thread above about the “thick Midi twang”— let me see if I can address that a bit. The Midi covers a wide swath of mostly southern France not far from the Pyrenees; in the Middle Ages much of the region was not Francophone, they spoke the Langue d’Oc, and that has left its traces on the French spoken there in modern times. I lived with a French family in the Dordogne area one summer when I was a teen, and I would say the difference between Parisian French and Dordognat was kind of like the difference between Katharine Hepburn’s upper-crust accent and an Alabama drawl. Dordognat was very nasal, with lots of “ng” sounds and r’s rolled heavily at the front of the mouth, not lightly in the throat. Instead of saying “oui” with a lightly flicked w and an “ee” sound at the end, in Dordognat you would say a somewhat drawn-out “wey.” That’s the accent I associated with the “Midi twang” anyway.As for Elizabeth’s note about the establishing scene at the start, it seems to be a Stewart tactic, at least in these early books: heroine arrives at hotel in beautiful locale, heroine studies the other guests over a meal and thinks about her reason for being there. It’s a workmanlike way to set the stage; in a thriller you don’t really want to draw out that process before launching into action, and I quite like it. To my taste a lot of fiction these days makes the opening too complicated. Stewart’s technique also gives the reader a little grounding in the heroine’s personality and point of view. And it’s incomplete enough to entice the reader to read on. Of course, this one has to establish two settings, the hotel and the convent.
You made me laugh with the comment on Jenny’s clothes! When I read this a few years ago, I included a note about the many clothing changes.
Abigail wrote: "You made me laugh with the comment on Jenny’s clothes! When I read this a few years ago, I included a note about the many clothing changes."Well, for once a change of clothes would have been quite sensible! And perhaps a daypack instead of a handbag, with a bottle of water in it?
Last night I listened to Chapter 3 and had to laugh out loud – there I was in Chapter 2 diagnosing an overheated The Mysteries of Udolpho kind of imagination, and now it turns out Stewart is doing this on purpose! Mrs Radcliffe, the author of Udolpho, is mentioned at least thrice – although in this context, her Italian may be more relevant, given its convent setting. Miss Silver certainly seems to have been brought up on variations of the Spanish Black Legend!
While Jenny's overwrought, overprecise observation had me wondering what was in her cigarettes, perhaps we are meant to think that this is her artistic vein coming to the fore? She's an art student, after all. Or possibly this is simply the author going over the top with a place she visited and loved. Let that be a warning to us all ;-).
Maybe in Mary Stewart’s cigarettes?
Started this morning and reached chapter 23 of 26 (audible). Loving it actually. Can’t see the comments since on the app but will catch up tomorrow 😜
Hi, everyone! I haven't been on this forum for a few years now I think, but I still get the notifications. I've been swamped with work but it's easing up a bit more and I could very much use a summer Stewart re-read and it's been enough time that I don't remember that much about this book except some good horsemanship (of which we have already had one small taste in these chapters)--so, long story short, I'm hoping to read along. I've enjoyed the observations in the earlier thread about language, and Stewart using English dialects to match French dialects. I confess I never really thought much about that before.
Like Elizabeth, I also admire getting the backstory out there--and I like it that we have the romance very neatly set up. No messing around here, no confused motives: we know what Stephen wants. It's really just a question of can he get it? It's kind of a reversal of a lot of romance plots where we know what the heroine thinks, but the hero is a mystery. I like seeing it switched up.
Julie wrote: "It's kind of a reversal of a lot of romance plots where we know what the heroine thinks, but the hero is a mystery. I like seeing it switched up."That's an interesting observation, Julie, and reconciles me a little with Jennifer, whom I've been finding frustratingly opaque! So she likes her food, so she's read Mrs Radcliffe's Gothic novels and views them somewhat ironically, and she's super-perceptive and hypersensitive to her surroundings. Yet somehow these traits don't seem to blend into a full character for me...
See message 80 above.
Abigail wrote: "See message 80 above."Ah! I thought I'd read through everything looking for someone to have posted something about it. I must be getting old; I missed it. Yours is so much better I'm just going to take mine down. Thanks, Abigail! ;- )
Curiously, reading Thunder On The Right, my initial reaction is that the overall feel is reminiscent of a Nancy Drew Mystery! Interesting, as my initial reaction to early chapters of Wildfire At Midnight was one of expecting the arrival of Hercule Poirot on the scene at the hotel... Time for a short break from MS. (Just a short one.)
Struggling with the unfamiliarity of the Omniscient Narrator telling the story in Thunder On The Right. It makes the intimate exchanges between Jenny and Stephen feel like her mother is there with them; too many voices and no direct connection. Frustrating...
You’re right, many later stories use a first-person narrator.
Abigail wrote: "You’re right, many later stories use a first-person narrator."Stewart's so skilled a writer that her first-person narratives border on being omniscient. I just love that. She offers the benefit of a (usually inspired, if not brilliant) near-omniscient perspective via her heroine as well as the immediacy of first-person. I'm so glad she moved on from some of her early format experiments; I think she really hit her best stride with the style she ultimately adopted.
Her first two books - Madam will you talk, and Wildfire at Midnight are first person. I never understood why she changed to 3rd person omniscient with this one. I don’t like the omniscient angle - it seems very dated!
Susan in Perthshire wrote: "Her first two books - Madam will you talk, and Wildfire at Midnight are first person. I never understood why she changed to 3rd person omniscient with this one. I don’t like the omniscient angle - ..."I agree. The omniscient narrator as written in Thunder On The Right always comes across to me like a fifth wheel! Intrusive.
Perhaps she was getting her bearings: finding her voice, so to speak. AlI I know is that once she found it, she took off like a thoroughbred! lol ;- )
Elizabeth wrote: "Julie wrote: "It's kind of a reversal of a lot of romance plots where we know what the heroine thinks, but the hero is a mystery. I like seeing it switched up."That's an interesting observation, ..."
I agree.
Galowa wrote: "Susan in Perthshire wrote: "Her first two books - Madam will you talk, and Wildfire at Midnight are first person. I never understood why she changed to 3rd person omniscient with this one. I don’t ..."I thought she took off from the very start with a virtuoso performance in Madam will you talk. This book is an aberration. It doesn’t work as well as the others. But that’s partly the (view spoiler) and the not so hidden anti-Catholic tone
Susan, can you put part of your comment in spoiler tags? This is the chaps 1-5 thread. Galowa is still reading it.
Abigail wrote: "Susan, can you put part of your comment in spoiler tags? This is the chaps 1-5 thread. Galowa is still reading it."Sorry Galowa, - I had totally forgotten this wasn’t a spoiler thread! Abigail, thanks for letting me know - I’ve edited my post.
Abigail wrote: "Thanks!"Thank you, Abigail and Susan; no harm done! Last night (prior to Susan's post) I read up to Chapter 18. All is well... (some ellipses for you...)
;- )
Karlyne wrote: "I think she's giving her this dialect so that she sounds comfortable and homey and not patrician as Dona Frederica does. As a contrast, in fact."Sister Louisa speaks with a "thick Midi twang". So they are talking in French but Sister Louisa has a regional accent, hence "aye" etc. I don’t know if there actually is a different Midi word for "oui" or just a different way to pronounce it.
And yes, definitely a contrast to Doña Francisca.
I'm answering this comment ten years later - will it work? (Could have used an ellipse there, ha, ha!)
Madam, want to talk about author Mary Stewart?
Books mentioned in this topic
The Mysteries of Udolpho (other topics)The Italian (other topics)
The Mysteries of Udolpho (other topics)
Thunder on the Right (other topics)
