Night Fall

by Joan Aiken

Haunted by a recurrent nightmare, a young English girl travels to Cornwall to trace the source of the dream.

Genres: Young Adult, Mystery, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Cats, Fiction, British Literature

116 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Joan Aiken was a much loved English writer who received the MBE for services to Children's Literature. She was known as a writer of wild fantasy, Gothic novels and short stories.

She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. She worked for the United Nations Information Office during the second world war, and then as an editor and freelance on Argosy magazine before she started writing full time, mainly children's books and thrillers. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972).

Her most popular series, the "Wolves Chronicles" which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was set in an elaborate alternate period of history in a Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution,and so supporters of the House of Hanover continually plot to overthrow the Stuart Kings. These books also feature cockney urchin heroine Dido Twite and her adventures and travels all over the world.

Another series of children's books about Arabel and her raven Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake, and have been shown on the BBC as Jackanory and drama series. Others including the much loved Necklace of Raindrops and award winning Kingdom Under the Sea are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski.

Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.

Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye (now a National Trust property). This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meg's Hollywood actress mother, known to all who love her as Fizz because of her effervescent laugh, dies suddenly. Without her mother Meg is plopped into the glass half empty (and no alka seltzer, apparently) of London life with a dad who will never love her. He had been left by his wife when he was ptsding after the Korean war, and so sees the flighty but I only have one life to live and you ALREADY sucked wife when he looks at her. They do have the same red hair so she may as well have left him for another man herself! There is a grumpy housekeeper and her limping husband to remind Meg what a slut they thought her mother was before her gloomy father comes back from a long medical seminar some place else to chime in with the slut shaming. Meg starts having nightmares about falling off a cliff and a face swinging before her. I would have had nightmares about wearing itchy school clothes and cleaning. Or her sexist father who believes women are no good sluts. They keep up the chores bossing for a few years and then the housekeeper story is not important but still mentioned a lot. A plump nice older lady moves in and then lives with her daughter while still cleaning for them. I liked her better than the stupid English kids next door she befriends. They have rich parents away in India while they sit around in boarding schools and houses until the plot transforms them into shallow scenesters to not really advance the plot. George, older than Meg and Polly by a few years, returns when Meg is eighteen. "Hey, you're hot now! Let's get married!" Meg is told a lot how much she looks like her mother so papa is determined she marry nice stockbroker George before she can turn into a slut. George likes to shame his sister in front of Meg so that she'll get that he's also criticizing her. Polly giggles and demurs. I hated them all. Meg doesn't really want to marry George but he said they were getting married and that is that. He says she won't be able to keep her cat, or continue painting (her painting portraits career only exists because Polly has rich friends, anyway). Amazingly, she only takes off because Fizz's sister conveniently returns from her job in Lebanon to tell Meg her dreams are about a cliff she fell off of in Cornwall. Meg meets someone almost immediately who tells her that she fell off a cliff in 1954 and a man was murdered before her while she recuperated. The hanging face was the dead man in a rocking chair. The mystery takes place in the last sixteen pages of Night Fall. What were the other pages for? She forgets about George when the son of the dead man kisses her. I figured he was going to be either the killer or the love interest. He does chastise her for announcing that she was there in town to investigate because the murderer could still be around. By "mystery" I mean it was still not a mystery. The murderer part is handled off screen by other characters while the last second romance happens. They temporarily held her cat hostage. He's found right away by the love interest. I couldn't muster up much about the cat considering she was going to let the stockbroker take the cat away from her until another guy happened along. The kitty would have been better off with someone else.

The only good part about Night Fall were the school bullies:

"Coo, Brenda! Dig the fancy shoes."
"Help. I'm fainting. Culottes!"
"Can I believe my eyes? Look at the sailor collar!"

What was with Meg thinking the nice lady who helped her after the catnapping was "dumpy"? What is she Vernon Dursley? I'm trying to think of a book that wasn't set in England that uses that word. It seems to me that in English novels they love to call women dumpy. Assholes. Meg almost has a loyal moment to her dead mother when thinking how she saved her after she fell off that cliff. That whole time, though, she's rather judgmental, despite that her mother's second husband was great to her. Years ago I read that you could pick the good Joan Aiken books from the bad ones by checking the publication dates. They weren't supposed to get bad until the '80s. Well, this was 1969 and it sucked! I can't believe the internet lied to me.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

All her life Meg has been plagued by a terrifying recurring nightmare. Finally when she is nineteen she finds out that it has something to do with an accident she had while staying in Cornwall when she was five years old. So she goes back to the little Village where she was staying with her mother when the accident happened, taking her beloved Abyssinian cat Hodge with her. Will she at last find out what it was that terrified her so much? An intriguing mystery with a thrilling climax.

[Maureen E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up at a library booksale, as an Aiken I hadn’t read. (I find it hard to resist the siren song of $1 hardbacks.) It’s a mystery that’s both odd and enchanting and, in a deeply weird way, it bears a strong resemblance to Fire and Hemlock. [Aug. 2011]

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was 11 when I decided I would read every young adult fiction book in my local library. This was not a daunting task given that my local library was underfunded and had maybe 300 YA fiction books. So I started with A. That's why I read Joan Aiken. She's since written lots and lots of books I see, but the ancient 1969 copy I had called her a new writer and mentioned that she was the poet Conrad Aiken's daughter. I loved this book. It started my love of things British and I subsequently adored all books set in misty moors, or the ragged coast of Cornwall. See also: Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and a William Sleator book called Blackbriar.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would never have guessed Joan Aiken had written this if her name wasn't on the cover. Short, readable, yet intensely stupid thriller about a woman trying to regain lost memories of a childhood trauma and so getting involved in an old unsolved mystery. The plot depends on everyone in it being an idiot-- not realizing, for instance, that twins commonly look alike.

[Erica Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

No castles or candelabras in this one but there is an old MANSION and CLIFFS and a raging SEA and a CAT and also she has recurring nightmares and a little bit of amnesia from a mysterious incident that occurred in her childhood.

Love Joan Aiken’s writing.

I love how after her near brush with DEATH after a dramatic rescue mission involving her cat, she’s like “I suppose I should write a letter to my fiance and break up with him”

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nostalgia read for me. Possibly the only book I enjoyed reading when I was in junior high, and definitely the book to kick off my love of gothic thrillers and all things Cornwall. The sense of foreboding builds through the novel to a thrilling climax at the very end. Was this groundbreaking? No. Was it predictable? Somewhat. But it was enjoyable nonetheless.

[Mindi A Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read & reread this many times. It's short, but so well written & very interesting. This is a story that has stayed with me for several decades! It's amazing how much Aiken fits into so few pages. I greatly admire her as an author & I just love this story.

[Lynn Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as a tween. Got it at one of the school book sales. I read it so many times as a kid! It’s your basic mystery and I loved the little romance in it. I still remember it decades later lol

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book when I was junior high.

[gardienne_du_feu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meggie verliert ihre Mutter und ihren Stiefvater bei einem Autounfall und muss aus den USA nach England ziehen, wo ihr leiblicher Vater wohnt. Für ihn ist die Aufnahme seiner Tochter eher lästige Pflicht als Liebesdienst, und entsprechend unwohl fühlt sich Meggie in seinem freudlosen Haushalt. Der einzige kleine Trost ist die Freundschaft, die sie bald mit den Nachbarskindern George und Polly schließt.

Über lange Zeit hinweg quält Meggie überdies ein wiederkehrender, bedrückender Traum, den sie sich nicht erklären kann, bis sie in ein verödendes Örtchen in Cornwall zurückkehrt, in dem sie als Kind einmal gewesen ist, ohne sich daran erinnern zu können. Dort fügt sich allmählich einiges zu einem düsteren Gesamtbild zusammen, nicht ohne Folgen für Meggie.

Ich schätze Joan Aiken sehr als Autorin stimmungsvoller Familien- oder Spannungsromane, auch großartige Jugendbücher habe ich schon aus ihrer Feder gelesen. „Nightfall“ gehört zu letzterer Kategorie, zählt aber nicht zu ihren gelungensten Werken, leider.

Der regelmäßig auftretende Alptraum, die kaltherzige Verwandtschaft und das im Aussterben begriffene Fischerdorf in Cornwall, das den Schlüssel zu dem großen Rätsel um den Traum birgt, sind perfekte Zutaten für einen düsteren Familiengeheimnisroman, doch aus irgendwelchen Gründen hat sich Joan Aiken hier nicht wie üblich Zeit gelassen, die Geschichte langsam aufzubauen und mit atmosphärischen Details auszumalen. Auf nur gut 150 Seiten wird alles ziemlich kurz und schnell abgehandelt, wodurch die Charakterzeichnung weitgehend auf der Strecke bleibt und sich ein Ereignis Schlag auf Schlag ans andere reiht, so dass trotz der guten Ideen eher wenig Spannung aufkommt.

Nette Einfälle, aber insgesamt zu wenig, um mich wirklich zu begeistern.

[max · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plus a half star. Never really gets into full stride so doesn't quite manage to make the unbelievable believable. Almost a long short story and the writing is crafted beautifully. After reading a number of overly long books the economy of this one was a pleasure and I love the way she shows us character and intention without telling us directly as so many otherwise interesting writers seem to irritate me by doing.

[Christine Honsinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read...for both adults and younger adults alike...only just over a hundred pages, it is fast and satisfying.