Chels

Happy Enola Holmes 3 release day! To celebrate, I planned to read the six original books in Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes series. Unfortunately, life got busy, and I only managed to read the first one. It was so good, however, that I’m planning on reading the rest of the series as soon as possible.

The first Enola Holmes film came out in 2020, but I didn’t find it until a few years later, post-lockdown. The film was charming and inspiring, and became quite meaningful to me. I was in the middle of my undergraduate degree, and I was quite scared to go back to in-person learning after so long in lockdown. I also missed out on getting an on-site parking permit, so I was forced to park my car by a local field and walk for 20 minutes to get to campus – not the most fun one can have during the autumn-winter term. On my first walk, cold and worried, I spotted a scrap of purple ribbon tied into a fence. Much like the purple ribbon Enola finds in her search for her mother, it gave me hope. It was a small reference to a film I’d enjoyed and found comforting, and surely it was a sign that everything would be alright.

The key thing to remember about the Enola Holmes series, both film and book, is that they’re ultimately children’s media. They don’t need to be perfect, they don’t need to win awards or be unsolvable – they’re meant to be fun, borderline camp beginner mysteries. In that matter, they succeed. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the novel – I certainly wasn’t expecting to be quite as captivated as it was. The books may be aimed at young readers, but they have such a compelling writing style. The prose drifts between historical and modern, but not in a way that feels disjointed. It’s a very delicate balance, and Springer found it. The story was easy to follow, yet still gripping.

I was curious as to how the ciphers would work in book form, since the film took advantage of the visual medium to show Enola’s solving of the riddles. In the book, Enola’s interaction with props is replaced with reader interaction – the ciphers are presented as solvable, and often Enola explains the solutions before providing them, giving hints as to how to solve them. Ultimately, I think the film made the ciphers themselves more interesting, but I still enjoyed their inclusion in written form.

There are two mysteries in The Case of the Missing Marquess; the disappearance and supposed kidnapping of Lord Tewksbury, and the disappearance of Enola’s mother, Eudoria. Both stories were altered for the film. The novel is short – only 160ish pages – and primarily aimed at readers aged 8-12, so while the Tewksbury story seems to wrap up rather quickly and concisely, it doesn’t seem rushed. In the film adaptation, the story was expanded to include political unrest tied to Tewksbury’s newfound role in the House of Lords. The character stays on as a key figure in Enola’s life through the film series, though in the original novel series, his presence is contained to his mystery only (although, in the new mysteries published since the success of the films, he has made a return).

Eudoria’s story, too, is much different. In the film, Eudoria runs away to join the Suffragettes, wanting to make the world a better place for her daughter, and enact political change. In the novel, however, this is not the case. Eudoria is associated with suffragists, and is part of women’s groups, but when Enola enquires with them about Eudoria’s disappearance, they cannot help her. Eudoria is even more of an outsider in the novel, having been the source of scandal after having Enola much later in her life, while her two older children (Sherlock and Mycroft) were already adults. There’s family tension between mother and sons which isn’t present in the films – and their relationship is not nearly as strained. In the novel, Eudoria’s disappearance is not fully solved. Much like the film, Enola uses personal ads in various publications to deliver ciphers to her mother, and by the end of the novel, she receives her reply. Eudoria is safe and well, and has run away to join a group of travellers. The mystery is perhaps solvable, on reflection, as Enola too interacts with a traveller community at the beginning of the novel, and it’s clear that Eudoria struggles with the expectations of society, seeking freedom. Enola is comforted by the message from her mother, and the knowledge that she is proud of her, she loves her. One question remains, why did Mother not take me with her?

While the Suffragette plotline in Enola Holmes was invented for the films, it certainly takes inspiration from the foundations laid in Springer’s novel. Eudoria and Enola both clearly resent the roles and expectations of women, and both subvert these expectations. Both women reject typical dress, though they embrace it when they realise it can be beneficial to them – they both modify shapewear garments to conceal supplies for their escapes. 

Following the first film, the Netflix series deviates from the plots of the book series – with entirely new mysteries to be solved, Enola teams up with Tewksbury, and Eudoria makes appearances to assist her daughter, while continuing to work with the Suffragettes. I came to the films before the books, so I have no strong attachment to particular mysteries (though I am particularly fond of the mother-daughter relationship), and I’m happy to take the stories as they come. Perhaps if I’d been an avid fan of the books I’d take issue with the deviation. I am glad for the changes though, as in the books, Eudoria makes very little appearance following her own mystery, and her ultimate fate is quite upsetting. With her increased presence and changed storyline in the films, I have hope that her fate will be changed.

I’ll be watching Enola Holmes 3 as soon as I have the time, and the rest of the Enola Holmes Mysteries novels have been pushed to the very top of my TBR list.