Nine Coaches Waiting, Hodder pb 2011. Illustr Robyn Neild, Gerd Hartung/akg-images
Nine Coaches Waiting, Hodder pb 1966. Illustr NK
Nine Coaches Waiting, Hodder pb, 1961. Illustr NK
Nine Coaches Waiting, Hodder pb 1968 Illustr NK
Nine Coaches Waiting, Coronet pb 1972. Illustr NK
It has been a while but I have made up another Mary Stewart quiz: this time on Nine Coaches Waiting. Again there is a mix of obscure and obvious questions, and I’d imagine it is impossible for anyone to achieve 100% (just wait till you see question 9…). The sole virtue of this quiz is that it is spoiler-free. Can you pass the test? Here it is:
As always, this quiz is constructed for free using the power of SurveyMonkey – they can’t help me ask sensible quiz questions but they do make the quiz look good! If you encounter any problems, please let me know.
Mary Queen of Plots 
Booyah! 100% Love that book…
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I am so impressed – you must know the book really well!
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70% – one answer I was “certain” about was wrong, and a couple of inspired guesses (or good instinct?)
I read it not too long ago, but some sorts of details don’t stick in my mind.
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Congratulations, Jerri, that is a good score! I’m afraid I set quizzes by flicking through the books and when I see details I don’t remember reading before, I’m interested and end up adding them to the quiz. So 70% is fab!
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I haven’t read many of the books yet, so I was pleased to find a quiz on one I know. 7/10. I must admit I kept getting confused about which one was Philippe’s father when I was reading the book, so I’m not surprised I got that one wrong. Thank you – that was fun!
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Hi Lucina, congratulations on a great score! I’m pleased you enjoyed the quiz, I had fun setting it
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8/10. Fun quiz! Totally helps that I read gbe book last year. My all time favorite Mary Stewart.
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Well done, what a great score! Coaches is a classic Mary Stewart, I especially love little Philippe and Linda’s care for him.
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Oh well, I am not going to tell you what I scored. I thought I could go by intuition, but it was not to be. But I read it only once, and (sorry) was not terribly taken with it. Perhaps because it’s so much of the 1960s Gothic tradition. You know, governess and all…. My attempt at rereading some years ago didn’t take.
But I did get the final line.
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Hi Susan, there are other quizzes on the blog if you want to see if you get on better with those! I’m sure you’d score more highly with a novel you really enjoy.
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Okay, time for another try at rereading. Because so many many people have said how much they like this one. I pulled my old 1977 Hodder pb off the shelf. But…. a) falling apart b) tiny print c) faint type. Yikes.
On to the Internet. Oh gosh. Lots of expensive varities. Almost bought a 1990 pb for $10 CAD, incl shipping; then I found 0.99 CAD Kindle edition.
Done. I’ll get right on it.
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Hi Susan, I’m glad you got a bargain and I hope you’ll enjoy Coaches more this time. It’s not one of my ‘favourite of favourites’ of the Mary Stewarts but I always enjoy re-reading it. Plus you will spot all the quiz answers as you read!
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Yes, Susan, I recommend you try the Wildfire at Midnight quiz in memory of our trip to Skye. I did very well on that quiz, although I have never really liked the “mystery” portion of the book. But I love the location and historical background, etc.
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Jerri – how lovely that you and Susan have been to Skye! Was this as part of a tour of Scotland?
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Well, as a fellow Linda, I should not have missed #1, but I did! And, I was quite sure about #9, wondering why you had mentioned it was hard. Then, I saw the correct answer! Overall, I scored 8/10. Fun quiz about one of my favorites. Thank you, Allison. As an aside, I always had a soft spot for the young man with the poetic name in the story.
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Hi Linda, now I am wondering if your name is ‘pretty’ for something too! Well done on the quiz, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I had mixed feelings about that man on my first reading of the book but yes, he is a lovely kind man.
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Allison, the trip Susan D and I made to Skye was really something special. Some years ago, a group of fans of D. E. Stevenson had a get together in Edinburgh, where she was born, complete with side trips to North Berwick (where Stevenson family including RLS spent summers for generations) and Moffat where DES and family moved during WWII. There were attendees from the US, Canada, England, Scotland and Ireland, as I recall. After the main events some went home and some split into small groups. Susan and I and two other women went to Skye. One of the women was from Scotland and used her car and acted as a sort of Native Guide to show us some of her favorite places. And the place we stayed on Skye was a place that may well have been the model or inspiration for the hotel in Wildfire at Midnight, located in the right mountains, etc.
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Hi Jerri, That sounds so good! I’m now wondering what D E Stevenson’s Edinburgh address was. Although I have lived in Scotland all my life, I haven’t been to Moffat and I’ve only been to Skye once, and I didn’t really think about Mary Stewart at the time. It sounds like a lovely group and an amazing holiday, and it’s clear that DE Stevenson has devoted fans!
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14 Eglinton Crescent, now a B&B, the Victorian Townhouse amd literary plaque site
http://www.cityofliterature.com/d-e-stevenson-honoured-childhood-home/
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Thanks, Susan, I hope to explore this location on my next visit to Edinburgh!
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Where was the place you stayed in Skye? I’m so curious to know what Hotel Mary Stewart based her hotel on in Wildfire At Midnight. I have some ideas, but what’s yours?
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Okay, I’ve now read Nine Coaches Waiting on Kindle, and enjoyed it much more than I remembered from before. But it had its flaws, including my confusion about Linda’s life passages. She seems to have been in the orphanage to quite an advanced age, and I couldn’t nail down the sequences of her life…. In rural France, in Paris, in London…. ? And then, the Gothic tropes… Very young inexperienced heroine, older brooding secretive man. I can never quite relate to books where the woman and the guy aren’t on the same wavelength, working towards the same end (Moonspinners, This Rough Magic). Instead, it’s all secrets and deceptions and mistrust.
Glad I picked it up again, however.
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Hi Susan, this is my third attempt to reply! Gremlins or it is past my bedtime… Glad you enjoyed Coaches more this time around, and hopefully you spotted quiz answers!
Linda’s relationship with *cough* reminds me of the Hitchcock film Notorious and the relationship of the characters played by Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant (and the Cary Grant character was originally written to be the villain rather than the hero, just like *cough*). Not a relationship I’d want in real life but I absolutely loved that film. Ah, if only Hitchcock had filmed a Mary Stewart novel…
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