I don’t have a lot more to say about the book. Given the carboard nature of most of the female characters in The Dark is Rising, having Jane back was a pleasant surprise. But it is Jane, forced to be part-adult herself, who sees the old man inside Will. Barney, the artist, is somewhat more friendly. Simon immediately bristles, seeing Will as a rival male. There is also the matter of the other child that Merriman Lyon brings along, a young friend of his by the name of Will Stanton. It is Jane who is left to point out that their previous adventure almost ended very badly for Barney. When Great-Uncle Merry suggests a return to Cornwall for the Easter holiday, Simon and Barney are immediately enthusiastic. As a young girl with two brothers, she has clearly long got used to having to be the sensible one. Jane is the most interesting character in this book. Jane stared at it, horrified, and from its sightless head the Greenwitch stared back. It was outside time, boundless, ageless, beyond any line drawn between good and evil. Thunder and storms and earthquakes were there, and all the force of the earth and sea. Jane Drew, being a) female and b) not exactly a ‘furriner’, gets invited to the making ceremony, and here we see Cooper doing what she does so well.įor she knew suddenly, out there in the cold dawn, that this silent image somehow held within it more power than she had ever sensed before in any creature or thing. The Greenwitch of the title is a sort of whicker man figure that is made by the women of Trewissick and sacrificed to the sea gods, presumably to guarantee safe return of their husbands from fishing expeditions, though she is made in spring so there’s doubtless a fertility element too. The plot is basically the need to recover the item that was lost to the sea at the end of that book, but along the way Cooper delves deeply into folklore again. Somewhat to my surprise, Greenwitch sees the return of the Drew Children from Over Sea, Under Stone. I’ve arrived at book three in my read through of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence.

Greenwitch by susan cooper