The Weathercock: Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias
1892
The Weathercock: Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias
1892
In a quiet Lincolnshire village, sixteen-year-old Vane Lee possesses the most dangerous quality a boy can have: a mind that won't stay still. From the moment we meet him foraging for fungi on a morning that thrums with possibility, Vane's inventive genius propels him toward trouble. He is the sort of boy who looks at a church clock and sees a problem to solve, who regards the local gentry's son not with deference but with the spark of rivalry. George Manville Fenn gives us a hero whose 'bias' toward ingenuity, toward refusing the expected path, makes him both exhilarating and unpredictable. The boating adventure that ends in disaster, the tensions simmering with the fiery Lance Distin, the scrambles with gypsy boys in the countryside, these are not mere adventures but tests of character. Vane's curiosity is his compass, and it points him toward danger as often as discovery. For readers who loved the rough energy of Victorian boys' fiction, here is a protagonist whose greatest gift is also his most troublesome burden: he cannot help but be himself.
