Reading books can be depressing. Just look at your shelves and see whether anybody got through unscathed without murders, backstabbing, suicides and vampire-related or non-muggle deaths. If you had too much of these sob stories, which let’s face it — most novels are, then Swallows and Amazons can be your remedy.
There is (not really) any villains here, nobody gets killed, almost everybody is a model citizen and nothing much really happens for the first 250 pages. Oh, but there is a LOT of sailing though. Pick up this book if you are a young sailor who has his private island in an English river. Aside from the nautical terms, which by now I forced myself to familiarise myself with, the book is a relatively quick and easy read. It is well-written but admittedly, not much happens aside sailing, camping, waging wars on each other and throw in a good dose of more sailing there.
I do have an issue with the characters, who are the epitome of the English schoolchildren, or any fictional schoolchildren that it can really just be anybody here. These characters are plain as paper, except perhaps for the terribly-named Titty whose inner monologues are more interesting than sailing for like the whole day. Think Railways Children, the Susan Coolidge novels, Burnett novels. All these children fell one and the same to me.
Somehow Swallows and Amazons managed to get the pace right. But because of the lack of conflict, until at least the latter parts of the book, I find the book a little bland. I think this is the wrong target audience syndrome all over again, but I still maintain a good children’s book should be consumable for older readers.
