The Moonstone Legacy

Coming across this novel makes me feel like a natural history explorer discovering a specimen long thought to be extinct. In style and content somewhere between Rider Haggard and Frances Hodgson Burnett, it bounces merrily along oblivious to any of the developments that have taken place in children’s literature during the last hundred years. Within its convoluted plot, faces drain of colour, blood runs cold, smiles (or sneers) ‘play’ across lips and crucial meetings take place in ‘a great oak panelled hall’ casting shadows across ‘immaculate lawns’. But rich and snobbish Aunt Lavinia and her bratty twins are no match for 14-year-old state-educated Lizzy, already an expert horsewoman and friends to all. Her weedy father is not much help when it comes to solving the mystery of the family curse, but Uncle Peregrine, who has ‘ethereal grey eyes’ and wears an interesting yellow tunic ‘that seems to button up both sides’ does better. Throw in a visit to India, during which Lizzy naturally comes to star in a film, plus the presence of adoring swains wherever she goes, and everything is set fair for the sort of adventure that in its day The Girl’s Own Paper might have been proud to have published. Two more sequels are promised; it is to be hoped that the main characters in the future will not venture outside in the snow too often, given that on present form they seem in danger of sinking into the clichés that drop on them so liberally wherever they turn.