Enid
                               
Director: James Hawes
Year: 2006
Rating: 5.5
I have been a fan of detective and mystery novels since I can remember. No doubt influenced by my parents who had hundreds of them that when I was older, I devoured. But I began with the Hardy Boys as did many other young boys - Nancy Drew for the girls of course - and the works of Enid Blyton. I am not sure if her books ever really registered in America - definitely not back when I was reading them - same with TinTin - but I spent much of my youth living in Asia where Tintin and Blyton ruled the children's book shelves. Blyton you see was English and wrote these proper English children books in which a group of friends solved crimes. At least that was part of her output. She wrote a number of different series - I was a huge fan of the Five Find-Outers with Fatty, Pip, Larry, Daisy, Bets and of course Buster the dog as they cleverly ignored their parents and ran down clues.



Quite wonderful when I was seven or eight. Out of curiosity, I tried reading one a few months back and I gave up after a few chapters. Children's books are for children. Not for nostalgia. To put it mildly she was prolific. 700 books. Mainly for children but she also wrote textbooks on education and nature. And on Greek and Roman mythology. And about fairies. She produced so much that she was accused of having ghost writers like those that wrote the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. Nope. She just wrote. All the time. Some 600 million of her books have been purchased. I think only a few writers have sold more. Agatha Christie being one. And I bet most of you have never heard of her.




Often it is best that you know nothing about the people you admire. This BBC production paints a pretty negative picture of her. Most I gather from one of her daughters. The other daughter says her mother was wonderful. Not a Joan Crawford monster but very self-centered, unaware of others, mean spirited and dismissive of many. Born in 1897, she left home as soon as she could because she hated her mother and her father had left home for another woman. She never contacted her family ever gain - not even her siblings. She wanted to be a writer and began with poetry before finding a publisher for her children's novels in the 1920s. She married that publisher and they were soon miserable together driving him to become an alcoholic. It wasn't until the 1940s though when her career took off with the beginning of the Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers and the Noddy books. One strange thing I learned about her was that she used to play tennis in the nude and that it was a thing for a while among the elite. It took serving the ball in a new direction. Jumping the net after victory and the many ensuing accidents led to its demise. Fortunately, this doesn't pop up in the film. By the 1960s, she began to slip into Alzheimer's and died in 1968.



Her books have had some controversy - attacked for being poorly written - BBC and libraries banned them for years for this reason. And in more current times her books have been condemned for racism, sexism and xenophobia. The usual complaints against books from that period. Considering what is happening now to clean up books of political incorrectness - it was interesting that they did the same to her books years ago. Gollywogs became goblins. Dame Slap became Dame Snap and get this one - Dick and Fanny become Rick and Frannie! Dirty Enid! All references to spanking were removed.



Her life was in many ways rather ordinary. She wrote 6,000 words a day she claimed. So, making an interesting film out of an uninteresting life is difficult and they don't really succeed. Snippets of her life, her children, her failed marriage but often just at the typewriter. What takes the film up a notch is the fine acting. Blyton is played by Helena Bonham Carter from a young woman until she begins losing her memory. She is rather amazing. Tragic in a way. She had everything she wanted but had nothing really. Her first husband is portrayed by Matthew Macfadyen (who I am currently enjoying in the Little Dorrit mini- series) and her second husband is Denis Lawson. One more idol smashed for me. But her books got me started on the world of mysteries, so I thank her.