The writing in this book is fine, and the characters are suitably... characterful. The only problem really is that the plot lacks substance, and when things are resolved, you can't help but think - wait, that's it? ( )

Astercote by Penelope Lively

The past seeping through into the present is a common premise of many classic children's books. Astercote, the debut novel of Penelope Lively first published in 1970, describes certain happenings in the isolated Cotswold village of Charlton Underwood, which finds itself trapped between a harrowing past and the unwelcome encroachment of modernity.

Rationally-minded schoolboy Peter Jenkins and his imaginative sister, Mair, are newly arrived in the village, where their father has taken up the post of headmaster at the local school, but before long they find themselves caught between the modern mode of life they are accustomed to and the uncompromisingly archaic ways of the old village.

Peter and Mair learn of the disturbing history of the area when their dog, Tar, dashes off into the forbidden woodland that adjoins the isolated World’s End Farm. Here they find the ruins of the abandoned medieval village, Astercote, whose 14th century inhabitants were wiped out by the Black Death, and meet a strange half-wild young man known as Goacher who guards something which is purported to ensure that the disease can never return.

When both Goacher and the protective object mysteriously disappear, mass hysteria grips the local populace, and isolated incidences of common illnesses are viewed by the superstitious villagers as proof that the plague is returning.

There is a wonderful lyrical quality to the author’s writing, which perfectly evokes the spirit of childhood during the 1970s while capturing with poetic detail a calming pastoralism. A keen gardener, Penelope Lively excels at describing the natural environment, and her protagonists are strongly characterized in a way which makes them entirely believable. The story also constitutes a snapshot of the clash between a largely pre-industrialized rural way of life and the modern society which exploded into being during the 1960s.

Astercote effectively explores the connections between the past and the present and the way in which landscapes and lives are 'haunted' by history. The power of belief and superstition and the potential harm they can inflict seems also to be a major theme of this story.

Although this book is a relatively short one, the story is powerfully atmospheric and will not easily be forgotten.
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This was a book I read as a kid, probably close to when it was first published, and I loved it! But I could not remember the title and only found it again thanks to the What is the Name of that book thread on this very site!

So thank to all those folks who chimed in with their ideas.

I was also delighted to find out that this was a book by Penelope Lively whose adult fiction I have enjoyed for decades. ( )

A wonderful story from childhood, reread for a challenge.
A sleepy Cotswold village is sandwiched between the past and the present; on one side the new housing estate, mildly resented by the "original" villagers, on the other side overgrown ruins of Astercote, a village emptied in the Black Death hundreds of years before and now overgrown by forest.
"The Thing", a chalice, goes missing, and the superstition of it preventing an outbreak of Black Death is reignited. When Betsey Tranter, at Worlds End Farm comes down with mumps, the old villagers unite in their suspicions of the new. A beautifully balanced tale (except making the villain a motorbike riding teen seems a little clichéd 30 years later) ( )

Two children, newcomers in a Cotswold village, stumble on a strange wild man in the woods, with a trained hawk and some odd-looking dogs. Though wary, he comes to trust them, and they find that he is guarding something precious (the Thing) from the lost village of Astercote, depopulated and ruined after the Black Death. But the Thing goes missing; a farm girl goes down with mumps; someone scratches a cross on the signboard; the old villagers begin to barricade themselves from the outside world: is the Black Death returning? The picture of rural England in the mid 20th century is well-drawn, with glimpses of the insularity of country folk (who regard someone from a village three miles away as "not from these parts"), the tensions between the new estate and the old village, the incongruity of historic village and local leather-clad bikers, and the intrusiveness of media attention. The fantasy element is very lightly applied: little more than a slight feyness shared between a few characters and a sense that something still lurks beneath the perfectly plausible and ordinary explanations for the unusual events. (Though surely there can't now be that many lost villages and ruined Tudor houses lurking forgotten in the crowded countryside of southern England!) I won't spoil the ending for you, but the hawk is a nice touch.

MB 8-iv-2013 ( )