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Cyrano

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Geraldine McCaughrean

Oxford University Press

019272603X

January 2006

Cyrano de Bergerac and his cousin Roxane are a couple of literature’s most frustrated lovers. Fifteen years after the death of Roxane’s late husband, Christian de Neuvillette, their relationship remains constrained by his memory.
Cyrano explains how the pair ended up in this situation. It’s the story of how Roxane was seduced by Christian’s words both written and spoken and how de Bergerac wrote those enticing entreaties to win the heart of the woman he loved for another.
Add in Cyrano’s embarrassment about his rather prominent protuberance, dashing heroism and a sneaky rival in the shape of the Comte de Guiche and all the elements are in place for a classic historical romance.
This is not a tale that has hidden its light under a bushel. Movies in the shape of Cyrano, staring G’rard Depardieu, and Roxanne, Steve Martin, have brought this story to life in traditional and updated environments.
Geraldine McCaughrean’s version is based on the original play by Edmond Rostand and opts for the traditional setting of seventeenth France. It has all the lyrical richness that the tale demands, Cyrano’s swagger is admirably conveyed, Christian is suitably eager and dumb.
The machinations of the Comte provide a darker background for some of the more pantomime moments and everything floats along effortlessly.
It is also book that opens up the debate about the merits of retelling a classic tale: is such a work more valuable than the more ‘full-on’ challenge of inventing your own characters, setting and plot? Is it merely a buswoman’s holiday for McCaughrean?
The marketing team at Oxford University Press won’t care about such writerly concerns, however. They will simply be delighted with the January publication date.
After all, any young beau who wants to convince the object of his affections that he is in touch with his sensitive side on Valentine’s day will find this volume far more effective than a box of chocolates.

Greater Gains

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K.M. Peyton

David Fickling Books

1904442714

Oct 2005

[Yet again I must follow the ministerial code and declare an interest. K.M. Peyton very kindly helped me with my writing and with general advice when I was just getting started. I’ve always been in awe of her writing ability.]
Another from the David Fickling YA collection, this book is the sequel to Small Gains, and continues the story of the Garland family, Norfolk farming folk in the early nineteenth century, beset by a fair selection of woes and challenges. The Enclosure movement, agricultural mechanisation, rural unemployment and depopulation, disease and the harsh social and penal systems of the time all rear their heads as historical backdrop to the two books. Even as this story begins, in first person narration by youngest daughter Ellen, we get a fair taste of the uncertain nature of existence’

My name is Ellen Garland. I am the youngest of four. The eldest, Margaret, died of the wasting disease when she was sixteen. My brother Jack, a year younger, had to flee from home to escape hanging after he fired Mr. Grover’s hayricks, and my other sister Clara, now fifteen, is pregnant and still at home at Small Gains. I don’t know who by, but I can guess. To give the baby a decent name she married the vicar’s son, Nicholas Bywater, just before he too died of the wasting disease. To give Clara her due, she loved Nicholas dearly, as did we all. But the baby isn’t Nicholas’s.
You can see this is a strange kettle of fish for a very ordinary farming family to be in, and our father is very depressed.

‘ and Ellen herself is, within a few pages, to be involved in a prank that leads to her imprisonment and subsequent transportation to Australia.
The heroine, however, and the dynamo driving force of the family, is Clara, and for her parts of the story we move into the third person. Clara is not pretty, she is the practical one, the hands-on daughter, tough and passionate. She is her father’s anchor, not least because, like him, she is born to the land and (more than anything) to understand horses, disdaining the conventions of the time to train her champion trotter Rattler for his gruelling twenty-mile races. Serious money can be made for the family from racing and from Rattler’s stud services.
In both the previous book and this volume, Clara receives her fair selection of knocks, and often fate seems to be against her. Her baby and her unwanted marriage are both the result of blackmail, in order to benefit or protect her family: yet although her heart screams at the shackles that hold her, her courage and willingness to meet circumstances head on without losing anything of herself allows her to thrive. And yes, there’s some romantic interest here, for Clara is in love with the son of another farmer, Prosper Mayes, currently in India.
I can imagine some readers finding these books too muddled ‘ the switches in narration, the uneven jumble of events, frequent repetition of characters’ thoughts and utterances and self-searching ‘ whilst others might not like the almost melodramatic quality of Clara’s romantic rollercoaster. For me, however, Peyton tells it like it is. Practical realities to be met with grit and compassion, dreams that one should not let go of, conflicts and confusions (Clara has to acknowledge her sexual attraction to her arrogant, blackmailing husband but recognises that this is not the love she feels for Prosper)’ and yes, a Philip Glass kind of repetition in what we say and think and question as we vary our human theme toward greater self-knowledge.
This is not quite Kathleen Peyton’s best work, but it is still streets ahead of most of the field, and very moving, as ever. The writing style is relaxed, direct and appealing, the historical detail full of life and passion, and the emotional questions blisteringly relevant. She is, in the words of The Times, a ‘born storyteller’.

Ithaka

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Adele Geras

David Fickling Books

1904442714

Oct 2005

Anything from the David Fickling YA stable is likely to be substantial, well-written and worth a lot more than a glance. The 400-page Ithaka lives up to these expectations: and yet, for all the brain fodder it offers, all the drama, the big human questions and the beautifully-crafted language, one can’t help wondering how many teenagers will really go for this.
The story is one of waiting. Long years of waiting for Odysseus, who left to fight the war against Troy, to find his way back home, via Cyclops, sirens and the rest. (I hadn’t read Troy, the first of these two volumes, and it’s many years since any scanty contact with The Odyssey, but that didn’t prove significant). Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and queen of Ithaka, is struggling to remain true to her husband, to believe in his survival, and to keep all ready – herself most of all – for his eventual return. To a greater or lesser extent, the royal servants and the whole of the island do likewise. Clearly the memory of Odysseus, the tales of his heroism and the need for a king have left a long shadow over the island, even affecting those who were no more than babies when their lord left. The goddess Pallas Athene adds to Penelope’s straitjacket of duty and faith by telling her that ‘as long as you are here, unchanged and unchanging, he will come to no harm’. To this end, the queen spends endless hours at her loom, weaving the images of her husband’s adventures and of his ship always heading for home. Meanwhile the hero’s ancient dog, Argos, pads around the place and dreams also of his master returning, whilst Telemachus, Odysseus’ son returns again and again to the armoury to take down his father’s massive hunting bow and marvel at it.
Yet the nature of life is change, and as time goes on, the strain of the waiting becomes a curse to the islanders. Soon, many are arguing that Penelope should declare her husband dead and marry again. The queen herself is emotionally and physically unfulfilled and restless, and the palace starts to fill up with a rabble of violent and unsavoury suitors, bringing chaos and disorder. As with a Shakespearean comedy, the idyll of Ithaka becomes tainted and corrupted by misunderstanding, deception, doubt: the reader can only wonder whether order is ever to be restored.
Much of the tale is told through the eyes and the growing pains of Klymene, the queen’s maidservant, and this is its strength, for the loves and losses of the younger characters around the palace are often the most touching and immediate. As a whole, however, there is a distance, a lack of either an emotional hook or a compelling, urgent story, that mars the narrative. Add that to the air of gloom that prevails ‘ ‘How much wickedness there was in the world. It was a wonder people found even a small amount of happiness in the midst of all the anguish’ – and we are firmly in the realm of Greek tragedy, where the gods have their sport of poor mortals. For those who desire such a read, you couldn’t do better.

Tamar

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Mal Peet

Walker

0744565707

Oct 2005

I’ve just done that thing you do when you turn the last page on an exceptionally good book. Close the back cover, stare gormlessly at the jacket illustration and make a cross between a sniff and a sigh. The sniff for appreciation of great work done, the sigh of regret that a story you’ve savoured has finished.
Mal Peet’s first novel, Keeper, was a miracle. A novel that finally revealed to me – a cricket lover – the poetry and magic in the game of soccer. Second novels are often disappointments, and when the author himself told me (at a summer party) that he was working on a novel set in Holland during the war, I confess I felt disappointment was on the cards.
How wrong. This is an outstanding novel. Outstanding in every regard. It establishes Peet as a novelist of immense gift and versatility, for no two novels could be more different than Keeper and Tamar and yet be so equally brilliant.
The two principal characters in Tamar are undercover operators working in Nazi-occupied Holland in support of the resistance. There is many an episode of nailbiting excitement in the book, but for much of the time the undercover agents have to cope with the boredom of waiting and watching, and with the interpersonal tension of loving the same woman.
Parallel to this is a more contemporary narrative, set in 1995, which is properly subservient to the war story, and yet utterly convincing.
Throughout the book the writing is of the highest order, crisply figurative description falling from Peet’s pen with apparent ease: “the mud had solidified into frost-capped peaks and ripples that looked like mountain ranges seen from the cockpit of an aircraft” or “the sky was the colour on old knife” to give just two examples.
Published by Walker Books as a Young Adult novel, Tamar is a novel worthy of standing with the very best of contemporary British fiction.

Ithaka

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Adele Geras

David Fickling Books

0385603916

Oct 2005




There is already a plethora of retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey for young people, though thankfully Ithaka doesn’t claim to add to these. The story is told from the point of view of Odysseus’ wife Penelope, left alone for over ten years, stubbornly resisting rumours that her husband is dead, and pressure from others to find Ithaka another king. Interwoven with her story are the lives of those who surround her in her palace, most importantly Klymene, Penelope’s maid, and her twin brother Ikarios.
As in Geras’ Troy, the romantic lives of her characters are bound up in complex love triangles, and the themes of unrequited love and jealousy run rife. Also similarly to Troy, the Gods walk amongst the mortals freely, either wreaking havoc or protecting the humans respectively.
Geras writes beautifully, and as ever, engagingly. The plot is fast-moving and dramatic and the characters are well-drawn and easy to sympathise with. The only problem I had with this novel is a strong sense of d’j’ vu. Echoes of Troy resonate through the narrative, the characters, and the plot, to the extent that you start to wonder if you are in fact reading the same book, simply told from a different perspective, and in a different setting.
Setting this aside, the novel stands alone as a highly accomplished and thought-provoking work, and an incentive for more dedicated readers to proceed on to Homer’s Odyssey.