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The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn
Apr. 3rd, 2022 03:48 pmThis book is compelling from the first page, when we meet three-year-old Cristabel, waiting for her father to arrive with his new wife. She has a stick in her hand. Although so young, she lives battles and fighting. No one pays her much attention except the wonderful maid, Maudie. At one point, Cristabel bribes Maudie to read her The Iliad and wonders again why, as in the Henty books she’s read, all the characters are boys or men. She asks what ‘woman-like’ (as in ‘woman-like they fall’) means. Maudie replies that it shows Mr Homer didn’t know her (Maudie).
Cristabel longs for a brother and after Flossie is born she gets one: Digby. The children live in a world of their own, based on stories and acting. They all sleep together in the attic; they’re like one. The Seagraves live at Chilcombe, an old house and estate near the Dorset coast. One day, Cristabel finds a beached whale and plants a flag in it, claiming it for her own. Much later, when an artist, his harem and a troop of his children (whom the Seagraves call ‘the savages’) have moved into a cottage on the estate, the whale is stripped of its flesh (a village effort) and the bones moved up to the cottage, where they are arranged to form a theatre. Cristabel becomes obsessed with this. As a born organiser she bullies everyone until the first production is put on, graced by many local visitors. The outdoor theatre becomes famous. (I wondered how much the author was influenced by the open-air theatre at Dorset’s Brownsea Island.) The children have a series of French governesses but otherwise run wild. When Digby is sent to Sherborne School, it’s the only normal thing that happens to any of them. So far, so charming.
Children have to grow up, war comes and this is where, for me, the book goes off and I lose interest. Digby volunteers to fight, enlists as a private but ends up in Special Operations. Flossie keeps the house going until she joins the Women’s Land Army. What can Crista do? She’s convinced she can do anything her brother (actually her cousin) can and persuades old friend of the family Colonel Perry to help her first to get in the WAAFs and then Special Operations. War is dangerous and frightening yet somehow, we lose the spirit of what those children were. No spoilers about the ending.
One of my chief reasons for requesting this book is that it was recommended by Francis Spufford. Huh. If he thinks people will love this book in the way they love I Capture the Castle, I fear he’s quite wrong. It reminded me strongly of two children’s/YA books: Hilary McKay’s wonderful The Skylarks’ War and Codename Verity by Elizabeth Wein. I found it a book of two parts: the first excellent, the second, not so much. I read this thanks to NetGalley.
Cristabel longs for a brother and after Flossie is born she gets one: Digby. The children live in a world of their own, based on stories and acting. They all sleep together in the attic; they’re like one. The Seagraves live at Chilcombe, an old house and estate near the Dorset coast. One day, Cristabel finds a beached whale and plants a flag in it, claiming it for her own. Much later, when an artist, his harem and a troop of his children (whom the Seagraves call ‘the savages’) have moved into a cottage on the estate, the whale is stripped of its flesh (a village effort) and the bones moved up to the cottage, where they are arranged to form a theatre. Cristabel becomes obsessed with this. As a born organiser she bullies everyone until the first production is put on, graced by many local visitors. The outdoor theatre becomes famous. (I wondered how much the author was influenced by the open-air theatre at Dorset’s Brownsea Island.) The children have a series of French governesses but otherwise run wild. When Digby is sent to Sherborne School, it’s the only normal thing that happens to any of them. So far, so charming.
Children have to grow up, war comes and this is where, for me, the book goes off and I lose interest. Digby volunteers to fight, enlists as a private but ends up in Special Operations. Flossie keeps the house going until she joins the Women’s Land Army. What can Crista do? She’s convinced she can do anything her brother (actually her cousin) can and persuades old friend of the family Colonel Perry to help her first to get in the WAAFs and then Special Operations. War is dangerous and frightening yet somehow, we lose the spirit of what those children were. No spoilers about the ending.
One of my chief reasons for requesting this book is that it was recommended by Francis Spufford. Huh. If he thinks people will love this book in the way they love I Capture the Castle, I fear he’s quite wrong. It reminded me strongly of two children’s/YA books: Hilary McKay’s wonderful The Skylarks’ War and Codename Verity by Elizabeth Wein. I found it a book of two parts: the first excellent, the second, not so much. I read this thanks to NetGalley.
