William Mayne Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Myles Mcdowell

Critical Essay by Myles Mcdowell

In A Parcel of Trees Mayne evokes a languid, summery world of long and lazy days and slow quest. He unfolds his story unhurriedly, drowsing and droning, so it seems. But the impression is deceptive—a retrospective impression. In fact, the story seldom stands still, and then only for the shortest passages. (p. 148)

There is with Mayne a sense of a slow, deep, steady current of understanding underlying the lighter surface show. The surface carries the reader buoyantly; the undercurrent it is which is remembered. And this, of course, is Mayne's strength, this hiding of the introspective, reflective quality in dialogue and incident. (p. 149)

Myles McDowell, in Writers, Critics and Children, edited by Geoff Fox, Graham Hammond, Terry Jones, Frederic Smith, and Kenneth Sterck (© 1976 by Geoff Fox), Agathon Press, Inc., 1976.