Magic Landscapes

by Mary Wesley

PAPERBACK - Some creasing and other signs of handling/storage. Pages clean and in good condition. Available by email for queries.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

Mary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II. During her career, she became one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.

She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.
Her best known book, The Camomile Lawn, set on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall, was turned into a television series, and is an account of the intertwining lives of three families in rural England during World War II. After The Camomile Lawn (1984) came Harnessing Peacocks (1985 and as TV film in 1992), The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1986 and filmed in 1995), Not That Sort of Girl (1987), Second Fiddle (1988), A Sensible Life (1990), A Dubious Legacy (1993), An Imaginative Experience (1994) and Part of the Furniture (1997). A book about the West Country with photographer Kim Sayer, Part of the Scenery, was published in 2001. Asked why she had stopped writing fiction at the age of 84, she replied: "If you haven't got anything to say, don't say it.

From Mary Wesley

Reviews

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of three of Mary Wesley's children's novels was a book in my local library when I was growing up. I read two of the novels maybe once or twice - they were slightly unsettling tales about talking animals getting revenge for vivisection and nuclear war causing the end of the world (they were written in the 60s) and I didn't care for them much. However, the first novel in the collection, "Haphazard House", had such a strong effect on me that I read it over and over, checking the book out of the library numerous times in order to do so.

A family moves to the country to get away from their hectic London lives and finds that time begins to work in unexpected ways. The locals are guarded and prone to gnomic statements and their new house seems to be haunted by a man who waves from an upstairs window which, upon investigation, doesn't exist. It's an odd book and genuinely quite creepy - I felt goosebumps on my arms on more than one occasion. The mystery of the house, and why certain people belong to it and others don't, is never fully explained. It feels like there is a solution there, just waiting to be unearthed, but I can't quite reach it.

[Nicolas Gambardella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recueil de trois romans, Haphazard house, Speaking Terms, the 6th seal. Trois romans classés en « littérature jeunesse ». C’est le cas du second, peut-être du premier, définitivement pas du dernier. Les ouvrages ont en commun l’atmosphère décalée, un peu magique (d’où le titre du recueil) ; des enfants qui parlent aux animaux, des morts qui ne le savent pas, de la neige en couleur. L’écriture est agréable, et riche, jouant souvent plus sur la suggestion que la description. Mon préféré est sans conteste le sixième sceau (titre levant une partie du mystère), le plus long des trois. Mais les trois pièces ont une chose en commune : le voyage est plus important que la destination, et le lecteur devrait apprécier la lecture sans attendre un dénouement qui ait réponse à tout. Toutefois cela ne nous laisse pas sur notre faim ; les histoires continuent de vivre après le livre fermé ; à nous de les finir ?

[Judi Fruen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had trouble reading the dialogue in these books, and had to skim over them rather than trying to assign each utterance to a character, but the plots were fun and I'm glad to finally have read them.