”What we saw there,’ said Dr M, ‘was an inside thing. Something, a feeling or a fear, that belonged to that little boy. The Wenlock pulled it out and took it away.”
The highly innovative and imaginative illustrator Joel Stewart proves himself equally proficient at the pacing and plotting of fiction for young readers in ‘The Trouble with Wenlocks’. Travel on a train takes an unexpected turn when everyone slips into slumber save for Stanley Wells who experiences an apparition. This apparition is later revealed to have been a Wenlock, an ethereal being with the ability to remove fear and uncertainty.
With parents living apart, and voyages made between their respective home, Stanley has been the subject of great change. His train ride extends as a metaphor for the journey of his own life, one that he must travel, arriving at difficult decisions alone with regard to his outlook and intended destination…
Delightfully idiosyncratic and whimsical, Joel Stewart captures that sense of the surreal that accompanies feelings experienced for the first time. Caught, on the one hand, between the enigmatic Dr Moon’s careful guidance and sage advice and, on the other, Joel Stewart’s intriguing first novel, readers could not be in safer hands.
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