Mary Stewart's The Moon-Spinners

In this episode of Tart Words, Suzanne Fox and Linda Hengerer are discussing Mary Stewart’s book The Moon-Spinners how she uses setting, shows family love and loyalties, and how her characters answer a call to adventure. 

It was first published in 1962 by Hodder & Stoughton and is now available in ebook editions.  

Takeaways for writers:

In The Moon-Spinners, Nicola Ferris is a young English woman working at the embassy in Athens. She comes to Crete for a holiday with her cousin Frances, who owns a successful nursery in England. Gaining an extra day due to the kindness of fellow guests at her hotel, Nicola sets off with a lavish picnic lunch. She comes across two men, Lambis and Mark; Mark has a gunshot wound. Sharing her lunch with them, she sends Lambis off for supplies while she tends to Mark. The seriousness of their situation is made clear to Nicola when they tell her that Mark’s younger brother, Colin, is missing and possibly dead.

After spending the night with Mark and tending his wounds, Nicola heads back to the village where she is due to meet Frances and stay at the new hotel. Stratos Alexiakis, born in the village and returned after a successful career as a London restauranteur to build a hotel, has brought Tony, a British co-worker, back with him. Stratos’s sister Sofia works at the hotel as a chambermaid and also has a windmill she tends in the field. 

Despite Mark’s intentions to keep Nicola out of his troubles, she discovers she is caught in the middle. 

Mary Stewart creates small family groups that work in different ways. Stratos, Sofia, and Sofia’s abusive husband Josef; Mark, Colin, their sisters; Nicola and Frances. Josef and the sisters don’t appear on the page, but their presence is still palpable. 

Nicola comes for a holiday and finds adventure and love. She is not passive when she is involved in Mark’s trouble; she actively looks for Colin and discovers that the hotel is the home of the villains.

Mary Stewart has several books set in Greece and outlying islands; her love for and familiarity with the country shines through in her descriptions. 

Exercises for writers:

Characters – How do you show characters with different family dynamics? How do you show affection between characters, even when those characters are not together on the page? How do you show tension when characters are trying to keep information from each other, using subtext and action instead of dialogue? Does your protagonist answer the Call to Adventure willingly, or are they dragged into the story kicking and screaming?

Setting – Is your story or series set in a real place, a fictional place, or a fictional place based on a real place? How do you use what you know of that setting to draw the reader in and make them feel part of the story?

Backstory – In a mystery, there are the events that culminate in the action of the current story. How do you introduce those prior events?  Do you work out those events before you write the story (Plotters, I’m with you); or do you see what comes up and adjust the past to fit the present (hey, Pantsers, I feel you)?

Read your favorite book in the genre you’re writing in, and note the author introduces characters and the dynamics with other characters. See how they describe scenes so you feel like you’re there and it’s real. Note how they use backstory and at what points they bring it into the current story.