The Bagthorpe Triangle

The Bagthorpe Saga #8

by Helen Cresswell, Jill Bennett (Illustrator)

When the local tramp disappears police efforts to find him are undermined by the well meaning assistance of the talented and eccentric Bagthorpe family each of whom follows their own line of enquiry. Suggested primary, intermediate.

Genres: Fiction, Childrens

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Helen Cresswell (1934–2005) was an English television scriptwriter and author of more than 100 children's books, best known for comedy and supernatural fiction. Her most popular book series, Lizzie Dripping and The Bagthorpe Saga, were also the basis for television series.

Reviews

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two primary schools of practice regarding the passage of time in juvenile serial literature. One is to embrace the passage of fictional time, trace one's juvenile protagonists on the rest of the bildungsroman trajectory, and introduce a fresh generation of juvenile characters to retain appeal to one's younger set of readers: this approach is exemplified by L. M. Montgomery's Anne books, with their succession of adoptees, pupils, children and neighbors' children. Conversely, one may choose to defy fictional time and keep one's protagonists eternally frozen in a single year of their lives, which is the safer and more commercial approach, although it does tend to strain credulity at some point; witness the Baby-sitter's Club, or, even more hilariously, the California Diaries spin-off, which attempts to have it both ways in a supremely implausible manner.

Helen Cresswell, with a mad genius worthy of a Bagthrope at their best, has invented a third and entirely different way. Beginning with Bagthorpes Abroad, each successive Bagthorpe book picks up immidately where the previous one left off, not allowing any precious fictional time to escape. Furthermore, each book in this sequence appears to cover ever briefer periods of said fictional time, in what might be termed Zero's Paradox, only reaching something that might be considered an ending in a scarcely-printed tenth book, which after Cresswell's death must be considered final. (I haven't been able to justify paying between $50 and $250 for a copy of this book and no institution is willing to lend it to mine, but I heard that it is inconclusive and unsatisfying.) These later books are linked by an unbroken chain of causality, which is no doubt why when Oxford University Press brought the Bagthorpes back into print, they stuck to the undeniably excellent first quartet.

This time dilation is perhaps at its most pronounced in The Bagthorpe Triangle, where it becomes a positive leitmotif, most fully expressed in this concluding epitome:

What was truly remarkable was that the Bagthorpes had achieved all this in a single day -- less than a day. From that fatal sucked-up sock to the welter of incident described (in part) on the six o'clock news, the fingers of the clock had circled perhaps ten hours. [...] Let us recapitulate:

1. Mrs Bagthorpe utters a Primal Scream and disappears into the Bagthorpe Triangle.
2. Mr O'Tool disappears into the Bagthorpe Triangle.
3. Mr Bagthorpe loses his car and is arrested on suspicion of his wife's murder, and on a charge of assaulting a police officer.
4. The Knaresborough Knifer is sighted in Mrs Fosdyke's living room.
5. A suspect device is sighted in Mrs Fosdyke's living room.
6. An entire county's emergency services is put on alert, and several teams are deployed in Coldharbor Road.
7. The Bomb Squad is called in.
8. Mrs Bagthorpe (still believed to be in the Bagthorpe Triangle, but actually in Coldharbor Road) develops full-blown amnesia.
9. Mr O'Toole, in his alter ego as eccentric millionaire, is reported missing to the police, and described as wearing an orange and purple frock.
10. Mr O'Toole (still believed by the Bagthorpes to be in the Bagthorpe Triangle) is arrested wearing stolen clothes, and on suspicion of being the Knaresborough Knifer.
11. Aunt Celia, already having a Phantom Pregnancy, is now expecting Phantom Twins (who themselves could be loosely described as being in some kind of Triangle).
12. Max Fosdyke, on the run from the police (and long consigned by his mother to a more or less permanent Triangle) fetches up at his mother's house. His sudden reappearance nearly finishes her off.

The book concludes, portentously, "The Bagthorpe Saga will continue ...", and it did, a bit. Would that it had continued further.

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Bagthorpe Triangle” is still funny, but the wheels are starting to come off. For one thing, the extent to which the Bagthorpes are self-absorbed and unfeeling has now been exaggerated well beyond believability. Grandma works hard, and quite successfully, to get her son Henry arrested, solely because she thinks it would be funny; in turn, Henry's utter indifference to anything that doesn’t interest him now seems to encompass almost everyone and everything; Celia’s similar attitude means that she utterly neglects Daisy while throwing all her energy into a pregnancy that turns out to be a figment of her imagination, because she can't possibly care about anyone other than herself. Furthermore, what were previously occasional elements introduced to liven things up — a rampage by Billy Goat Gruff, or the appearance of the police — are now regular occurrences: the police, in particular, make an appearance in almost every chapter of the book. Mrs. Bagthorpe finally has the nervous breakdown that seemed to be impending at the end of the last book, and the surprise is only that it took so long and that she snaps out of it so quickly. Most of her offspring are marginalized: only Jack has a significant role, as the family’s lone decent member not currently detached from reality (Grandpa, of course, went that way in a peaceful fashion long ago). But this tends not so much to make him sympathetic — though it does, to the point that one starts to worry about his mental health as well — as to make the rest of the family seem even worse: do none of his siblings really care at all that their father is in jail and their mother has vanished? And that’s the issue here: the Bagthorpes are no longer an eccentric and unpleasant but believable family, but rather a bunch of crazy people whom nobody could possibly bear to spend the least amount of time with. I tend to think that this was inevitable if the series went on long enough: a series as dependent on wacky antics as this was almost guaranteed to keep raising the level of wackiness until it started to strain the credibility of its characters, and with “The Bagthorpe Triangle” this has undoubtedly happened. And once the characters lose credibility, the books are not only worse, they aren't as funny either. To be fair, not as funny is not the same as unfunny: Cresswell still gets me laughing considerably more often than not. But the next time I reread the series, I'll probably stop after the 6th book.

[Beccy Swanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wore out the audiobook tape of this when I was younger! Didn't realise it was in a series, I'll have to find the rest