Over Sea, Under Stone
by Susan Cooper,
illustrated by Margery Gill. .
Puffin Books 1968 (1965).
Simon, Jane and Barney Drew go to the attractive Cornish fishing village of Trewissick for the summer holidays, where their Great Uncle Merry has secured a holiday home for them and their parents. Attractions include a busy harbour, beaches, walks and a carnival featuring Trewissick’s famous Floral Dance. There’s even a resident dog, Rufus, to add to the fun. The signs are promising for the Drew children to have a wonderful break.
But the signs are not to be trusted: why is the boy whom they encounter on the harbour quay so horrible? Are the nice Norman and Polly Withers all they seem? Why should Jane be wary of the vicar Mr Hastings? Is Mrs Molly Palk the housekeeper as friendly as she appears? And why does Great Uncle Merry keep disappearing?
The scene is set for the Drew children to have an adventure they never expected when they arrived at St Austell train station for the start of their holidays.
Apparently Over Sea, Under Stone was begun in response to a competition for family-adventure stories in the style of E Nesbit (Five Children and It may have provided a template) but another model also suggests itself. Three children and a dog may only amount to four characters but when they discover, while exploring the attic, an old manuscript with a sketch map I sense more than a whiff of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories. However, things get much darker more quickly, with ancient mythic conflicts providing a battleground in which the siblings — aided by Rufus and Great Uncle Merry — are required to play a pivotal role.
This is a story where there is little to lighten the mood. Not only do we have the archetypally distant parents but most of the townspeople the trio meet have a pall of suspicion hanging over them. To add to the menace of human adversaries there are chilling phenomena of a supernatural nature; as well as kidnaps and chases the children face an underground journey and the threat of drowning. As a trope the underground journey doesn’t just have mythic significance but is familiar from other children’s literature (notably The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen) and it offers the same scope for suspense and anxiety.
Significantly, their quest for the grail — for this is the object all are searching for — doesn’t prove to be simple, one-goal task: as Barney wisely notes at the beginning, “You can search and search, on a quest, and in the end you may never get there at all.” Their initial exploration of the objects in the house’s attic — “like reading the story of somebody’s life” — will prove the catalyst that initiates the author’s The Dark is Rising sequence, in which their lives will intertwine with other key protagonists, and with Arthurian legend.
Trewissick seems to be a conflation of two locations: one is Mevagissey, southeast of St Austell, which Cooper knew well from holidays there; the other is Trevissick Manor, between Mevagissey and St Austell, currently offering farmhouse accommodation. Much of the action of Over Sea, Under Stone can be located at Mevagissey — Chapel Point could be Kenmare Head with its standing stones, Penmare headland is where local legend sites gravestones, St Peter’s church is St John’s in the book and so on. Mevagissey also has a Feast Week with a carnival, as does Trewissick in the book, though this takes place at the end of June as opposed to August, as in Over Sea, Under Stone.
After all the menace and hint of the supernatural I particularly liked the prosaic ending in a national museum, with a Celtic relic in its display case and learned discussion of its provenance by passing academics. This of course underscores Cooper’s elaboration of Arthurian elements here and in the rest of the sequence — which is particularly fitting for a Cornwall setting, given its legendary links to both Arthur and Merlin generally and to King Mark on this same coast, at Castle Dore near Fowey on the other side of St Austell.
Did I enjoy this? Yes, in many ways I did. But I found its endlessly sombre tone oppressive — though I’m sure this was deliberate — and its long extended dialogues, like a long-winded theatre script, were at times quite wearing. As my overriding impression both before and after this reread is oppressiveness as well as being worn down, my assessment may come over as damning with faint praise; but in what is otherwise a cleverly crafted and exciting fantasy these are really my only caveats.
In the 2015 Reading Challenge this novel fulfilled the category of a book with antonyms in the title
Calmgrove 
I think the next book, despite being adult, has a little more joy in it — TDIR is set at Christmas, and there’s family warmth and love all through.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, that’s good news, Nikki! I read some of these as library copies thirty-odd years ago and can barely remember anything about them, so a revisit is definitely on the cards. Looking forward to different settings too — Buckinghamshire, I think, and especially Aberdyfi!
LikeLike
I don’t think Kemare Head can be Chapel Point, as it’s either on the wrong side of Mevagissey harbour and too far away or the author ignores the bay at Portmellon: “They were all three hot and breathless by the time they reached the beach in the next bay from Trewissick, on the other side of Kemare Head” for example.
Mevagissey may have been in the mind of Susan Cooper when she wrote Over Sea, Under Stone but the actual geography of the place doesn’t match up.
There is a harbour, a headland, a hill with some houses, a maze of streets in Trewissick – but it could be anywhere really (nothing in the book that is specific to Mevagissey) and hard to make the locations fit around the actual harbour.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re right, it’s not an exact fit, and when we get to Greenwitch there are more inexact fits, or rather exact non-fits. I’m sure there are good reasons to believe Cooper was hugely inspired by Mevagissey, but as you say it could any Cornish fishing village, whether on the Atlantic side or facing the English Channel.
I wrote this review five years ago when I started my revisit to Cooper’s sequence but I have to keep reminding myself that in a fantasy as much as any fiction the writer can mess around with whatever they want, whether it’s invented characters, taking liberties with chronological history or indeed redrawing the map.
LikeLike
I’ve now read this for the third time and absolutely agree I’ve got Kemare Head and the headland with the so-called gravestones round the wrong way. And of course, the configuration of the Mevagissey coastline can’t really easily accommodate the sun setting over the standing stones as viewed from the other, southern headland. Ho hum, one lives and learns.
LikeLike
I was never this enamored of this volume in the sequence but I couldn’t pinpoint my reasons so precisely. I think you’re right that it’s too long-winded — Cooper matured in her writing in that respect later on (the other book set in Cornwall, Greenwitch, is the shortest). The later ones are some of my favorite books and have forever given me the image of Wales as one of the most exciting and magical places in the world. I can’t believe I’ve still never been there!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I should know about “long-winded”, Lory — I suspect that too many of my reviews are too long-winded by half (if not more)! I’m glad Cooper sharpened up after this debut — perhaps the long gap between this and the subsequent novels gave her the space she needed to refine her writing.
I agree Wales is magical — of course I would say that, wouldn’t I, having moved here! — but I think there is magic in most parts of the globe if only one’s sensitive to it. Another brilliant British fantasy writer from the 60s, Alan Garner, managed to infuse suburban Manchester with mythic magic in Elidor after all! (Though even he borrowed from Welsh and Arthurian legend to do it.)
LikeLike
Greenwitch is my favorite of TDIR — when I heard Susan Cooper speak at a conference late last year, I had Greenwitch for her to autograph. She was surprised, but also, I think, pleased. She took time to look at the cover and remember the artist who had drawn it.
Will you be blogging about each volume in the series?
LikeLiked by 1 person
How lovely to meet the author herself, Lizzie! I’m looking forward myself to Greenwitch as I don’t recall actually finishing it; I’ll probably get the series via the library over the course of the year — so much else I’ve promised myself first!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with Lory – this wasn’t my favourite story from the series either. That’s The Dark is Rising itself – absolutely my favourite book from my entire childhood. I wanted to be Will Stanton so much it hurt – well, I at least wanted to be his best friend! I could have happily lived in the Stanton household, with all the kids and dogs and flute practice.
Susan Cooper and Alan Garner are the stand out authors from my youth – they were ‘my’ writers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hung on to my 60s copy of this because of its specifically Arthurian references, but have now — finally — got it out of my system! Will seemed a much more epic figure than the more human-sized Simon, Jane and Barney, so it’ll be interesting to see what I think of him forty years on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, Will is brave and important to the Light – he stands his ground even when he’s terrified. A proper hero
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLike
I didn’t even notice a sombre tone in my read, I found it rather light-hearted. Of course my childhood reads included Brothers Lionheart so my scale for sombreness may be off.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t know the Lindgren, had to look it up, but its premise is intriguing — may have to procure that somehow, sometime. But then our capacity for sombreness varies, doesn’t it, between individuals and even individually at a different age on a different occasion. Maybe it’s just me!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I personally believe it to be her best, it is certainly her most challenging and controversial one.
I would certainly agree that our capacity for sombreness varies, sometimes just by our mood. Perhaps culture also plays a role, I wonder if there might not be a bit more melancholy in general in Nordic literature.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a cliché, isn’t it, or maybe a stereotype, that Nordics are more — shall we say — serious, and there is the oft-quoted claim that suicide is more prevalent amongst certain Scandinavians, all adding to that sombre reputation. I only studied Ibsen at school, but boy can he depress the spirit!
But then, at university the most sensible and yet positive students I met were Norwegian engineers, of whom there were a lot in Southampton in the 60s, so what do I know? 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I believe the suicides and the seriousness are largely myths but we might have a stronger appreciation for the value of a touch of melancholy in art. Take Tove Jansson, her stories are rarely tragic but very often have a melancholic atmosphere. I find that quite typical, although Jansson is a master in it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll go with melancholy then!
LikeLiked by 1 person
For “modern” retellings of the Arthurian legends, I regard Mary Stewart’s and Susan Cooper’s as the best. Though Alan Garner’s books are also powerful.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed, and each retelling is quite distinctive. That’s the beauty of the legends, that they can inspire such varied responses.
LikeLike
Oh wow! Thank you so much for responding.
I am addicted to children’s literature, especially from the 1950s-1970s, and still re-read many of my favourites from time to time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For many, this was a golden age of children’s literature, though I haven’t revisited as much of my childhood reading from this period as I would like—too much else new-to-me to read!
LikeLike