Astercote - Penelope Lively

[burlingtonbertram]

Astercote by Penelope Lively
Her first novel
Children's novel first published 1970

I remember this from children's television. I thought it was a series or maybe serialised on Jackanory. A quick Google search however makes me think it must have been the made-for-television movie broadcast by the BBC on the 23rd of December 1980 “The Bells of Astercote”.

The Black Death took three days to kill its victims. The prologue introduces us to a dying man on his last day. He is the last person alive in Astercote. All that is left are the houses, the church, chickens scratching in the gutter and a bewildered Ox roaming free.

We then move forward to the present day (well, circa 1970). Mair (aged 12) Peter (a year older) and their mongrel dog have moved into the village of Charlton Underwood. One day they lose their dog in the woodland near World's End Farm. They encounter Goacher, a young, ugly, unkempt man who seems rather unwordly.

Goacher shows them the ruins of Astercote in the woodland. He obviously feels a real connection to the place even if he has no idea of how long ago the village died.

As they get to know Goacher and the Tranter family, the children wonder just what the 'Thing' is that Goacher is guarding. Could a sensitive child like Mair almost 'see' the vanished Astercote in her mind's eye?

When illness sweeps the village, tensions arise between the established local families and the incomers from the new housing developments.

Trouble always attracts trouble and Luke, a local biker, is about to make things a lot worse...

This is a 'low fantasy' book, which is more about the perception of the supernatural than the supernatural itself. The author has taken an interesting but awful period of European history and woven the fear of it into a comparatively modern setting. At 44 years old I'd still count it as a modern novel but maybe others wouldn't. It is however loosely set in its time and could be anywhere really within a twenty year period either side.


First published 1970
My edition Puffin paperback 1987
Still tightly bound
148 pp

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've read Astercote and quite liked it, though I preferred A Stitch in Time and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. Helen Cresswell's The Secret World of Polly Flint reminds me of Astercote in certain respects. Slow, dreamy novels where the past and present mingle were quite popular in the 1970s-80s. I'm 44 too and I also tend to think of books like that as being reasonably modern, but my children (who borrowed two or three such books from my bookshelf when they were younger) consider them old-fashioned!

[burlingtonbertram]

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is amusing and one of my favourites. Must give TSW of Polly Flint a try.