The Ready-Made Family

The Ready-Made Family is the seventh in the series of children's novels about the Marlow family by Antonia Forest, first published in 1967, and set in that period. Although most famous for her school stories, it is the third in a row in the series to be set away from the world of Kingscote college.

The Ready-Made Family
First edition
AuthorAntonia Forest
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SeriesThe Marlow Family
PublisherFaber and Faber
Publication date
1967
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN0571085474 (hardback edition)
Preceded byThe Thuggery Affair 
Followed byThe Cricket Term 

Plot

The action begins at Easter at the Marlow family estate, Trennels. Nicola, Lawrie, Ginty and Ann arrive home to be joined almost immediately by their eldest sister Karen. Karen announces that she is giving up her history degree at Oxford (funded by a much-lauded scholarship) to marry Edwin Dodd, a widower and father to three children: Rose (ten), Chas (nine) and Phoebe ('Fob', five). Karen marries Edwin and they move in with the Marlows whilst Edwin searches for a house near his new job as county archivist at Streweminster. Rose becomes attached to Mrs Marlow and, distraught at the prospect of moving, runs away to her former home in Oxford. Nicola learns of this and follows her, to discover Rose in the company of a sinister figure called Uncle Gerry, who claims Rose's mother is still alive. Rose, naive and grief-stricken, believes this until she sees a For Sale sign on the family's former house. She and Nicola escape, running into Edwin, who has been alerted by a telegram from Nicola.

Themes

Antonia Forest originally intended to be a writer of adult novels,[1] and her children's books reflect a range of serious concerns. Here they reach an apogee, as Rose's grief at the loss of her mother leaves her vulnerable to grooming by a paedophile. The plot reaches an emotional climax as Nicola uses her schoolgirl Latin to describe to Edwin what has happened; Rose herself remains ignorant of the peril she has narrowly escaped. Elsewhere, Jane Austen, Shakespeare and railways are motifs and a strong impression of Oxford is conveyed as Nicola searches and explores the city.

Plot implications

The fact that Karen's scholarship ('The Prosser') is now free for Kingscote college to re-award becomes a plot strand in the next Marlow book, The Cricket Term. Although it is a school-set story, the Dodd children re-appear (with Karen) at the beginning and at school speech day at the end.

gollark: > Beware apioforms. It has zero width space for that.<|endoftext|>The idea was not that it was designed to spread frequently pressed keys around the keyboard and bite.<|endoftext|>I think the key is that they could move onto achieve arbitrary sorts though, but *not* the right way to run a keyboard.<|endoftext|>Well, you could just use a keyboard and not automatically hit it.<|endoftext|>"Your keyboard is a desktop keyboard and has keyboard and speech synthesis capability."<|endoftext|>Ah yes, fair.<|endoftext|>No, it's bad. It has keyboard shortcuts.<|endoftext|>`utilize` should work, because it's a shell.<|endoftext|>`utilize` is a shell but only `rm` is a shell.<|endoftext|>`scala` does not exist.<|endoftext|>`scala` is a shell. It's not lua. It should not recurse infinitely.<|endoftext|>`scala` is the shell.<|endoftext|>`csh` is a shell.<|endoftext
gollark: It... says nothing?
gollark: Trying with "beware apioforms" instead...
gollark: > Apparently the picture is palaiologos's picture is palaiologos's picture.
gollark: > My opinion on apioforms is ~~not real~~<|endoftext|>If you do things people can do that subject to memetic campaigns.<|endoftext|>You can't do that with Autobotrobot.<|endoftext|>A finite but arbitrarily large quantity of apioforms in a finite time and the GTech™️™️™️™️™️ sphere station capacity.<|endoftext|>They can do that.<|endoftext|>Wait, is this using the advanced heavserver emitter or something?<|endoftext|>In a sense, I mean.<|endoftext|>The picture secretly encodes the entire image into a microcontrollers.<|endoftext|>Well, the picture contains a finite but arbitrarily large quantity of bees.<|endoftext|>https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/47791692185690374144/ferriswd0c68/unknown.png<|endoftext|>Apparently the picture is palaiologos's picture is palaiologos's picture.<|endoftext|><|endoftext|>https://media.discordapp

References
  1. Heazlewood, Anne, The Marlows and Their Maker, Girls Gone By Publishers, 2007. ISBN 978-1-904417-90-3, p.81
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.