There is a thread on the Enid Blyton Society’s online forum, in which various members of the society attempt to explain the appeal of the Famous Five books. For the most part, they do a wonderful job, pointing out the spirit of adventure that runs through them, the complexity of George, the moral clarity of the characters and the sense of escapism that must have seemed even more abundant when they were read during the bleak postwar years. The books, the thread claims, are good clean old-fashioned wholesome fun.
But what of the rest of us? The readers who aren’t members of the Enid Blyton Society, who aren’t automatically predisposed to love the Famous Five books? Those of us who have long been disappointed that none of the books ended with Julian discovering that his mother had been fatally stabbed in the throat by a gangster, and reacting by slicing open her abdomen and placing his hands inside her womb in a gory yet gratuitously over-literal metaphor? What of us? Huh?
