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First published in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps has since evolved into a true 20th century literary and cultural phenomenon. Subject to numerous filmic adaptations for both big and small screen, (including one by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935), numerous sequels both by Buchan himself and other, later contributors, The Thirty-Nine Steps may initially seem a simple, childish and quintessentially British ripping yarn.
Indeed, this is its reputation, yet it is a novel that manages at once to conform to these expectations and simultaneously to vastly exceed them.
In his dedication, Buchan outlines his view of the adventure/espionage genre as one in which ‘the incidents defy the probabilities’. This is certainly true of The Thirty-Nine Steps. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book to which Samuel Taylor-Coleridge’s famous notion of the ‘suspension of disbelief’ is more necessarily applicable. Into just 98 pages Buchan manages to cram murder, espionage, car chases, stake-outs, train journeys, incarceration, explosions, numerous mind-boggling disguises, political intrigue, literary discussion, concepts of empire and a little casual racism to boot. The plot of The Thirty-Nine Steps is as relentlessly purposeful as the trains on which Richard Hannay, the novel’s protagonist frequently travels.
Newly returned from colonial South Africa to ‘the Old Country’, and despite the hustle and bustle of pre-war London, Hannay is restless. Inactive and without direction, when a fellow tenant in his apartment block approaches Hannay terrified and spluttering tales of political and criminal intrigue on an international scale, he is quick to come to his aid. However, the plot thickens when Hannay, returning home, finds his ally with ‘a long knife through his heart that skewered him to the floor’. Things escalate at an alarming rate from here on in, as Hannay rushes to the Scottish Highlands of his birth to try and evade the sinister clutches of his invisible adversaries.
Despite an apparent simplicity and assuredness, this is a novel which is both historically and literarily aware. There are references to Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad during the chapter amusingly titled ‘The Literary Innkeeper’, and the novel is always conscious of its First-World-War context. The enemy, naturally, are Germans and if Hannay succeeds in thwarting their evil scheme he will prevent Europe from being cast into a cataclysmic total war.
Hannay inhabits a world where coincidences abound, luck is pushed to breaking-point and choices are simple. Yet there remains something of the chocolate box about the book. Despite the book’s frenetic pace, Buchan still finds space for to observe the beautiful flora, fauna and landscape which characterise his novel’s Scottish backdrop. There are, moreover, several charming depictions of rural life, which manage to be at once clichéd and an interesting social commentary of early 20th Century Britain.
This is in fact a good summary of The Thirty-Nine Steps as a whole; it is what you expect and oddly, exactly what you don’t. It’s a boy’s own adventure of its time, with a scandalous attitude towards race and an outmoded outlook on Imperialism, but is therefore indicative of the culture that produced it and that’s one of the reasons why it’s so interesting. This coupled with its unexpected naturalist sentiments and vivid depictions of rural Scottish life has been what’s endeared it to its readership for almost a hundred years. Definitely worth a read, if only for comedy value.
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