Fiction: December 2006 Archives

“‘Poppycock,’ said Miss Fortwell firmly. ‘I believe completely in extraordinary things happening. No doubt about it.’”

As with previous novels, in ‘Lucy Willow’, Sally Gardner makes a powerful and heartfelt assertion as to the roles individuality, belief and responsiveness to one another and our environment play in establishing a conducive cultural climate.

Eponymous Lucy Willow is a girl who, together with her pet snail Ernest, lives an extraordinary life. Their abode consists of three railways carriages and their lifestyle is idyllic, if not somewhat non-conformist! Privatisation of the stretch of railway on which they live, however, threatens the Willow family’s lifestyle forcing Mr Willow to take a job at the local, fairly dilapidated garden centre, Peppercorns.

Whilst in employ at the centre, the fairy-tale fire that burns at the heart of this novel, really takes hold… Wronged out of their familial inheritance, the Peppercorns, lost one of their garden centres to the opportunistic Sparks family

Jacqueline Wilson’s story “My Brother Bernadette” takes an astute look at gender stereotyping as the bully-boy of the summer project, Big Dan, picks on sensitive and creative Bernard prompting the group to follow his lead. Rugged determination wins the day, however, as Bernard single-mindedly sets out to learn to sew and through so doing finds a highly creative way to wreak his revenge upon Big Dan.

The clock is on in Anne’s Fine’s “Countdown” which sees Hugo desperate for a pet gerbil. His dad agrees provided Hugo is able to stay alone in his bedroom for seven-hours, the length of time any prospective pet gerbil would be expected to entertain itself within caged walls during Hugo’s absence at school. This compassionate and deft allegory stimulates early moral and ethical consideration.

The third tale, “Snakes and Ladders” plays out the downs of bullying and the ups of heroism and bravery in the school yard! Michael Morpurgo gives an expose that provides insight into the roots and the dynamics of bullying. The victim of Simon McTavish’s snide remarks, Wendy’s home life is disturbed when her granddad is taken into hospital for a hip operation. Concerned as to what to display from her life on the ‘interesting things’ table, Wendy eventually settles on Slinky, her granddad’s pet snake, things quickly – and quite literally – get out of hand…

Each story showcases the works of the three ‘author’ laureates incredibly well. It seems a shame that the opportunity to cohere the stories through this has not been formalised with an introduction providing background to the laureate scheme thus advocating this. This omission feels a little like a missed opportunity and lends an otherwise very strong and inventive collection an air of the arbitrary. With full colour illustrations, and three tales by leading authors, "Three for Tea" will make a heartingly cost-effective introduction to favourite writers for many...

Hmm. Had this one for over three weeks and I’ve just finished. (Sorry Michael) My wife suggested that this initial sentence would suffice, but on we go.

Chapter One. Forces of light and of darkness. Mention of a ‘Nine’ of heroes and heroines. A dark lord, a Black Tower (no, not the Liebfraumilch), a demon battle host. Any of that sound at all familiar?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all anti-fantasy. I read and re-read The Lord of the Rings many times as a child. I consider Garth Nix to be ‘the business’: Ursula LeGuin even better. There is some tremendous stuff out there in this genre, but (to misquote Groucho Marx) Setting of a Cruel Sun just isn’t it.

Funnily enough, despite some of those early clichés, lack of imagination isn’t the root of the problem in this book. There are a complex host of different peoples and even species imagined against a backdrop scented with our own Middle East. Roughly speaking they are grouped into the Hotec-Ra, the tyrants who have ruled the land with an iron hand (not a wooden foot or a piece of string…. Cf The Goon Show circa ‘59?), the Helati rebel slaves, who wish for a new era of equality and justice, and the fearsome Darkwing, a once-human, now life-hating demon lord. So, all the heroes have to do is defeat the overlords in a great battle and thwart the Darkwing’s scheme to destroy the life-giving sun and everyone can settle down to a bit of serious sunbathing with maybe a cocktail or three. Piece of cake, and (although the usual good-versus evil-for-the-fate-of-mankind fare) an okay fantasy plot.

The problem comes first that this is a sequel that really feels like one for at least fifty pages, if not more. The story opens at the end of another great battle, with the Nine just recovering from a previous victory, and feels like a strange mixture of a formal history being unfurled and glimpses of a large number of individuals with too many pasts and characteristics to possibly cram into the text. Result: a real hard slog for several chapters.

But even when I had worked out who everyone was and what their aims were, I still struggled. I think this is partly due to that uncomfortable mix mentioned above (great history versus personal events) a mix that Tolkien manages well in a much longer work that grew over decades of imagining and re-imagining but just feels rushed, messy and formulaic here. Add to this a correspondingly strange narrative style that sometimes has characters directly analysing their own motives and actions against the wider backdrop in a most unconvincing way - “What do I feel?” asks one particular traitorous villain, “Yes, I am jealous… There is comradeship among the enemy, whereas we Children of Ra cheat and deceive... I am without friends or confidants. In my loneliness, I envy my foe.” – and quite often brutally spells things out rather than letting us draw our own conclusions or allowing tension to mount: “The decision would have grave consequences. Before nightfall the next day, it would bring the swords of the Sol-ket down on his village.”

I kept asking myself during my reading if I was being too harsh, but the reality is that I failed to engage emotionally with any of the characters, I was rarely surprised by the plot and, by the end, I felt as if I was simply filling in the numbers in a hellishly large but low-level Sudoku puzzle.

As ever, just one person’s opinion. You might love it.

Two distinctively different but equally compelling narrators tell the story of Arthur and his daughter Allie, whose love of sailing is as passionate as her father’s. Morpurgo masterfully manages the dissimilar voices of each storyteller. Arthur’s tale is an honest reflection on a life of hardship occasionally lightened by love. Allie’s narrative, written partly in e-mails, captures absolutely the tone of a spirited young woman on an incredible journey.

The strong tidy thread of plot belies a myriad of inspirations, deftly woven together. Morpurgo’s story is informed by the harrowing historical accounts of child migrants, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the e-mails of Alex Whitworth and Peter Crozier, who circumnavigated the world in their yacht in 2004.

Discussing ‘what makes a children’s book great?’ critic Julia Eccleshare once said “what makes a book so amazing is the feeling that you cannot stop reading it… an urgent book.” Urgent this book certainly is.

I would have read the book in one sitting if it were not for the two sections – as such it demanded two! Be warned: once you start this epic adventure story, you won’t want to stop.

Two distinctively different but equally compelling narrators tell the story of Arthur and his daughter Allie, whose love of sailing is as passionate as her father’s. Morpurgo masterfully manages the dissimilar voices of each storyteller. Arthur’s tale is an honest reflection on a life of hardship occasionally lightened by love. Allie’s narrative, written partly in e-mails, captures absolutely the tone of a spirited young woman on an incredible journey.

The strong tidy thread of plot belies a myriad of inspirations, deftly woven together. Morpurgo’s story is informed by the harrowing historical accounts of child migrants, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the e-mails of Alex Whitworth and Peter Crozier, who circumnavigated the world in their yacht in 2004.

Discussing ‘what makes a children’s book great?’ critic Julia Eccleshare once said “what makes a book so amazing is the feeling that you cannot stop reading it… an urgent book.” Urgent this book certainly is.

I would have read the book in one sitting if it were not for the two sections – as such it demanded two! Be warned: once you start this epic adventure story, you won’t want to stop.