Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - John Lawrence

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

143 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

With hints of Jasper Fforde (and a passing nod to Enid Blyton and her contemporaries), The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy is a comic novel, a surreal parody of children's adventure stories aimed at adult readers in which, unnervingly, the time-travelling characters are aware of their place in the narrative, and the author treats them with curmudgeonly disdain. The plot, creaky and with more holes than a Swiss cheese, is the vehicle for the quirky and unusual humour which is packed onto every page. Our young-adult heroes - Betty, Daniel, Ricky, Amy and their dog Whatshisname - think that they live life on the edge, dominated by secret passwords and meetings. They have a tetchy relationship with Whatshisname, who might just be cleverer than they think; they also have a tetchy relationship with the author, who definitely isn't. The characters sometimes become uncontrollable - Ricky walks out of the book at one stage and, at another critical point, Daniel demands that his character should wear spectacles. A feeble attempt by the author to kill off his characters fails miserably. This book for adults is crammed with humour, occasionally a little cheeky, never offensive, but always unashamedly silly.

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	04 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781848769885
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0098€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy
John Lawrence
Copyright 2010 John Lawrence
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 5 Weir Road Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0LQ, UK Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1848 764 590
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 10.5pt Times New Roman by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For my brother, Colin, who ll now never get to read this book but who shared the zany world that was our childhood
Warning:
This book contains mild violence to animals when deemed appropriate; one or two instances of innocuous swearing; eighty-eight uses of the word suddenly ; three-hundred and eighty-nine, yes three-hundred and eighty-nine, uses of the quite irritating qualifier quite ; one reference to drug abuse by a character who should have known better, and three tasteful references to explicit nudity in order to stoke up the narrative when all else had failed.
Apathy is the way to happiness. Mental and transcendental tranquillity is only achieved through the joyful celebration of utter mediocrity. Utter mediocrity, if worked at, is the ultimate accomplishment. And then there are all the theories about Did Dog Create Man, and the creation of the universe, going right back to The Big Woof, which always brings me back to the same huge question - why on earth do I have these never-ending bouts of flatulence?
The Thoughts of Whatshisname, 2010
Author s notes
It started as a short story, written for fun, satirising children s books of a certain age. But the characters soon insisted that it became something more hefty.
In the course of writing the book, the intention of parodying elements of the style of Blyton and her contemporaries - the traditionally simple sentence structure, the abundance of the dreaded adverbs such as suddenly and carefully , an array of qualifiers such as quite and rather , not to mention plot holes the size of Saturn - soon meandered into other styles. (Mr H Pinter, Mr J Joyce, I m so sorry ) It seemed to become a surreal parody of itself as the satire inflated beyond my original intentions. To sustain this mischievous way of writing, I had to control my mindset as I cast aside rudimentary writing rules while trying to maintain the narrative s Blytonesque anchoring points. And the supposedly one-dimensional child characters began to show signs of a second or even a third dimension, damn them. You can hardly blame them, as they are subject to curmudgeonly authorial commentary and a textual self-awareness - one of them even decides half-way through the book that his character, against my wishes, should wear spectacles. Hmmm.
And, let s face it, these aren t children, I only call them that to upset them - they re young adults, so we can get away with humour that s occasionally a little cheeky, but never intentionally offensive. My parameter was: would it be acceptable for Radio 4? If it was, my internal editor okayed it.
And as for the dog, Whatshisname - he, in particular, deserves a trilogy of his own; he, above all, never lost his sense of purpose; he was the one to lead the narrative in and out of philosophical territory. And he, unlike the four children , didn t hide away from the author to complain about their treatment as characters. My only regret is the kangaroo.
If you ve never read children s books such as Blyton s, I have two messages: one, your childhood missed a treat; two, I suspect that when you have finished this work, you may well be searching out a Blyton book in an effort to capture the delight of her original style.
Meanwhile, prepare yourself for a mischievous read Enjoy.
John Lawrence
Contents
Author s notes
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty six
Chapter Twenty Seven
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
PART FIVE
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
PART SIX
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Reading Groups - suggested discussion points
Credits
PART ONE
Chapter One
In which we meet The Secret Five; are forced to listen to Ricky s stream of consciousness oh not again I wish he d stop; wonder if we ve bought the wrong book; blame our parents for encouraging such a style of writing; hear about, but probably don t care about, Uncle Quagmire s strange disappearance.
Whatshisname wasn t thin and wasn t fat. No, that s a lie, he was fat. A fat ugly spaniel. As he lay curled up in the front porch of the English country cottage he pondered on the universal question: do animals think? He just didn t know. There wasn t enough spare time to think about it, to come up with a convincing conclusion. He sighed and opened one eye. No sign of a super adventure yet, then, thank goodness. Why on earth did they always have to have adventures? And why did they include him in their silly Secret Five club? Maybe if he feigned senility or distemper they d leave him alone. He sighed again, opened the other eye, and lifted his head to glance at a Persian cat on the lawn. It was lying on its front, casually leafing through a Persian-English phrase book just in case a speaking cat might be needed later in the story.
Whatshisname sniffed the air. Nice Sweet peas, roses and various other brightly coloured flowers with long and unpronounceable Latin names, most of them ending in -eaeaisa or -dondendadooronron, crowded the garden of the cottage, their scent mingling with his own flatulence which, it seems, had passed through the gates of hell and back before being gently liberated from his generous backside.
He closed his eyes again and sighed, happy to be part of a typical country cottage scene, exactly like you sometimes see on the lid of a very posh tin of biscuits, except for the average contents label, of course. Apart from that, it was typical. It even had a typical village postman, wheeling his squeaky bicycle up the leafy lane. Squeak, the bicycle went, squeak, squeak . Marvelling at the quality of the ad lib sound effects, the postman rested it against the wall, next to the Best Before Date and the May Contains Nuts label, but it still continued to squeak so he kicked it and it stopped.
The typical village postman carefully looked in his postman s sack and even more carefully took out a letter. He held the envelope up. To The Secret Five, Guantanamo Cottage it said. What a surprise Who d have thought an envelope could speak Well, bless his soul and everyone else s too. He smiled, knowing that it might be a very important letter which could start yet another interminable adventure for these four insufferable children and their fat ugly dog. He smiled again, and then another one for luck. He looked at the long long path leading to the cottage door and the dozing dog, shrugged one shoulder, then the other, and tossed the letter over the gate and onto the top of an ecologically-sustainable compost heap.
Satisfied, yet strangely dissatisfied, he adjusted his padded cycling scarf and jumped onto his bicycle. Suddenly he jumped off again, cursing the prankster who had stolen his saddle. Wiping a tear from his eye and re-adjusting his Love Kylie underwear 1 , he pushed the now unsqueaky bicycle back up the lane, bemoaning the insignificant part he was contracted to play in the story. As he walked gingerly away he loudly quoted lines from Shakespeare ( Within their alabaster innocent arms, their lips were four red roses on a stalk . . . ) and, just in case, from Eastenders ( cor, Mo, that geezer s just fallen down the apples . . . ) in the vain hope that he might be called upon to appear later in the story, should the plot became desperate enough or the supply of supporting actors suddenly dries up.
Whatshisname watched as the postman disappeared from view. He sighed again. Surely there was a better way of earning bones. Better make a move, they d wonder where he was, maybe.
Inside the cottage, Betty was slowly waking up after very quickly falling asleep. She ran down to the kitchen in her pink Barbie dressing gown, scratching her bosom, which had appeared almost overnight when she was sound asleep in her bed some years ago. The following morning Betty had asked her embarrassingly flat-chested mother what they were and where they had come from, as they seemed to be a matching pair, almost, but all she got was a mumbled story about The Bosom Fairy and An Unfair Share.
In the kitchen, Betty s Aunt Trinny was carefully toasting and buttering some home-made muffins which had, in truth, been made at someone else s home. Betty s elder brother Daniel, who was over twenty-and-seven-eighths, rather tall and just as serious, was seated at the kitchen table sucking Sugar Puffs up his nose through a straw. This was