The Revenge of Samuel Stokes

by Penelope Lively

When positively uncanny things begin happening in the new housing development, Tim and his grandfather realize they must do something to stop them.

Genres: Childrens, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this. It's The Ghost of Thomas Kempe again, in a way, only instead of an alchemist/apothecary, it's Capability Brown (a very famous landscape architect and gardener, credited with inventing the English Manor landscape in the late 1700s, if that name didn't ring an immediate bell). Only here he's Samuel Stokes, and I'm not familiar enough with the personality of Brown to say if there is any obvious overlap, or just a jestful homage to the great man.

The characters are terrific - Tim's Grandfather has just rocketed into the position of my all-time favourite fictional grandparent. Neighbour Jane I definitely pictured as a young Kate McKinnon. Tim wasn't as developed as he might have been, but it's difficult as he was the narrator. Lively's grasp of the social interactions of parents, groups of adults, adults interacting with children, children interacting with children, local politicians and the rest (including the personalities and thoughts of the cats) had me giggling. This is the funniest book of hers I have read.

Unlike in The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Tim, our narrator, is not isolated in his haunting - in fact, between himself, Jane his continually bashed up and utterly ungainly neighbour, and his absolutely hilarious Grandfather, Tim's the only one who is tempted to refute the simplest explanation (being that Samuel Stokes is somehow present and is bringing about the destruction of a newly build housing estate whilst simulataneously resurrecting the breathtakingly grand former Charstock Park manor house and grounds from two centuries prior).

It's short, it's funny, and the grandfather absolutely steals the show. Though I have to mention that Jane's rich internal life was pretty charming, and Lively's depictions of the neighbours and their interactions and reactions was just pure gold.

Loved it. I've read nearly all of Lively's books for juvenile audiences, and this is right up there with my favourites. Very surprised it isn't better known - I enjoyed it more than The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and The Whispering Knights.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weirdly, considering how beloved a book it is, I’ve never read the Ghost of Thomas Kempe and instead grew up with this book as a childhood favourite. Less a ghost story and more a farce whose antagonist is a snobbish gardener dead for a couple of hundred years, the joy is in the old buildings and gardens popping up around a new estate at incongruous moments and how our heroes - a nicely sketched couple of kids and a joyfully silly grandad - eventually convince him to leave the housing estate alone. The fun is in the comedy of manners and particularly the grandad, whose great joy is absurd cookery. Food is often a great sign that the author of a kids book knows what they’re doing, as it’s a sensory connection they can really connect to, and food wafts through this is great splodges of eccentric meals and ghostly scents of fancy meals. That Stokes essentially is not beaten but instead comes to a begrudging understanding with the grandad is almost entirely because of food and gardening, which is a nice touch. It’s a minor novel but feels at times like a brisk Ealingesque comedy slightly adrift in time

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny story about what happens when a housing development clashes with a long-dead landscape gardener who's not prepared to have his plans changed.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read. A wild story of a new development beset by problems from the past with an angry ghost of a landscape artist. I'm sure there are folks in Florida that wish something like this would happen to some of the prolific building that is going on there. Clever ending. I enjoy Penelope Lively, but have a hard time finding her books. I lucked across this one at a library sale.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, I knew I had to read any of her books that I could get my hands on. So here I am reading this delightful book.

In this story, a housing development that they call estates cause British people are fancy,are built on the grounds of a previous actual sprawling estate. Tim and his family are one of the first to arrive. Tim is okay with moving there because his very cool grandpa lives close.

As weird things start to happen, Jane and her family move in. Jane and Tim become best friends, and they spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on.

Once they figure out that the place is haunted, there isn't much that they can do because who would believe them? Parents never listen to kids.

And this ghost might be more of a poltergeist. He can only make himself known through Tvs, radios, and telephones. But he can make anything happen. He can create cracks in houses, make food smells where there is no food, create brick walls, and create a lake, just to name some of it.

It's great fun going along for the ride as the clueless adults blame everyone around for the problems at hand. So it's obvious who ends up solving the problem.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penelope Lively has a unique distinction in being the only author to have won both the Carnegie Medal and the Booker Prize. Deservedly so as her children's books have the same qualities and provide the same pleasure as those she writes for adults. Many of them deal with the same themes too - especially the influence of the past on the present. The Revenge of Samuel Stokes, written for younger readers than some of her more well-known children's books, is a slighter, more overtly comic, story than books like Astercote or The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, but is nevertheless an engaging, thought-provoking tale of landscape as palimpsest, of history butting up against modernity.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much; I thought I'd be firmly on the side Samuel Stokes, whose beautiful 18th century formal garden is now a housing estate, but I wasn't--the garden and stately house were gone by the time the housing estate construction happened, and Samuel is an ornery snob, who knocked down old cottages and displaced their residents to create his great garden.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charstock is a brand new housing estate built on the site of a destroyed stately home. odd things begin to happen, Tim notices the smell of roasting dinner coming from the washing machine, Mr harvey next door finds box hedge coming up where there should be runner beans, another neighbour is outraged to find a Greek temple where they had put up a greenhouse. Tim and his friend Jane realise that Charstock is being haunted by the ghost of Samuel Stokes, the landscape gardener who designed the gardens of the old stately home, and who is determined to restore charstock to its former glory. But can anyone stop Stokes? This is a very funny and original ghost story, and Stokes is a wonderfully memorable character.

[Sula · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual with Penelope Lively the theme of time is within the story, here as the setting of a relatively modern housing estate which is being built is connected with its past by the anger of an 18th-century landscape gardener who designed the gardens of a country estate that stood on the site. Definitely an interesting concept, but unlike some of her other children's books this lacks the emotional and intellectual depth that make them stand out and appeal to all ages, revealing more when re-read as an older reader. Still a short and sweet story for young readers with more well-formed characters and realistic interactions than many.