We Are the Famous Five

I never really minded the Famous Five. I grew up in a time when they were massively unpopular. Elitist, snobby, old-fashioned, racist and the rest of it. And it's easy to see where some of old Enid's shortcomings are. But I loved her books, I didn't care what anybody said. I'd devoured Noddy at three, pre-school, book after book. In infants' school I'd loved the Faraway Tree books and the Wishing Chair. Strange to think how Blyton's held up as some kind of jingoistic and retrogressive figure. As a reader it always seemed that she was avid for the different and the exotic. The Faraway Tree books always seemed to be about travelling elsewhere, to other places and - yes - respecting other cultures and beliefs.

We were talking about Blyton a lot in my MA class this week. Most of us had grown up with her and we talked about that sense of being addicted to her books. I read the Secret Seven and Famous Five a little later than most - maybe nine or ten years old. I was in that typical boy thing of loving to read series and working my way through a whole collection. I was the same with the Target Doctor Who books and the James Blish Star Treks and various other things. And I liked the endless repetitions of the Famous Fives. It's a comfy holiday thing: they get together in their vacations for reunions and adventures. They do the same old stuff and the reader doesn't groan when the same picnics, the same clues, the same kinds of villains recur. We get the pleasure of recognition, of feeling safe in this world.

Some wonderful stuff came out in the seminar about exposition. About how Blyton saves most of it for the dialogue, so that the characters themselves tell us what's going on. Just as kids playing games do. Narrating their own stories as they improvise them. And there's something very improvisational and on-the-hoof about Enid's writing - banging away, six thousand words a day, a book every fornight - her typewriter on her lap in front of the drawing room fire. You really get the sense of someone having a lovely time, with complete confidence, making it all up as she goes along.

As she kept saying in the BBC4 biopic this week starring Helena Bonham-Carter: She knew exactly what kids wanted to read. She just knew exactly what to write. (The film was okay. Nicely made. Not much to it. She was awful with her own kids. We knew that already and the film didn't go much further. It was a kind of Mommie Dearest with jam tarts and lashings of ginger pop.)

Much better is the Duncan MaClaren book, 'Looking For Enid', which I read Christmas before last and which set me off and rereading a tranche of Blyton. It's lit crit by an ex-Enid addict who rediscovers his fanboyishness in a charity shop and seeks out the locations for her books and life. There's some ropey and unnecessary pastiche (similar to the Laura Thompson biog of Agatha Christie, published the same year - why is it these biographers suddenly feel the need to get all creative on us, halfway through?) but I thought it was a fine book.

It made me go back to Kirrin Island again - and back to my favourite - Mystery Moor.

Something that was said in our MA class this week that rang very true. Growing up on a council estate in the 70s or 80s, the world of Blyton's islands, caravans and picnics seemed very alien and false. Yes, they were posh and privileged. But that didn't put you off. It felt like reading science fiction or historical fiction. They were just different, with different stuff around them. So you didn't feel excluded. It was all about being drawn in and being made part of that gang and that's what we loved.