Life must be filled up

The Week Before Christmas by Freda C Bond is the second of four books about the Carol family, which I mentioned briefly here. The cover and black & white drawings are by Mays, who illustrated Noel Streatfeild’s Curtain Up and many of the Jennings books.

The four Carol children live with their parents in a smart London flat, with ‘Posset’ as they call her, coming in every day to do the work. How agreeable. At the start of the Christmas holidays the younger children, Squibs and Tony, fear that things will be dull until Christmas. Instead, in the week of the title they find themselves hunting for their mother’s stolen ring, tracking a missing child, getting on the trail of turkey rustlers and befriending a nice refugee family. Tony’s life is busy as he has a good singing voice and is very involved with the local church choir. He takes religion seriously as does older sister Susan, who goes to a boarding school run by Anglican nuns. You can tell what sort of girl she is when she takes a liking to a girl they meet, thinking, ‘I bet she’d make a wizard prefect.’ Lawrence is also at boarding school and turning into a languid, arrogant public schoolboy. At home with his family he becomes quite human and as keen on adventures and planning a Christmas charade as the rest of them.

From the jacket blurb: What we especially like about Freda Bond’s books is that they are happy stories about real-life people, who manage to have adventures in their everyday comings and goings. Her children and grown-ups alike are lovable and natural – the sort of folk who might live next door to you. If your neighbour happened to be a famous actress, that is. As far as I’m concerned, the Carols need never have any adventures at all; I like just to read about their daily lives in post-war London.
( Angela Thirkell and more )

I’ve read nearly everything Jacqueline Wilson has written and, as I’ve said before, I prefer the books she writes about modern children with modern problems to her Victorian series. Clover Moon is set in vague ‘Victorian times’. Clover lives in Hoxton with her father, sister, stepmother and a horde of half-brothers and sisters. Even though her father is in work, the family is desperately poor and the children looked down on as ‘street children’: dirty, ragged and always playing in the alley. They don’t go to school. Stepmother Mildred treats Clover like a skivvy and childminder and beats her so badly that the neighbours notice. In spite of this, Clover remains feisty and optimistic, dreaming of a better future. She has a friend, a hunchbacked old doll maker who teaches her to read and write or, as Mildred would have it, ‘get above her station’. It’s the sauce factory for Clover as soon as she’s old enough to work there.

How she escapes this fate by running away and finding a better life makes for an engrossing read, if an unlikely story. It’s interesting to compare this book with Victorian morality tales like those by Mrs O F Walton which also deal with ‘poor children’ and how they can be rescued. In Mrs Walton’s world, religion plays a great part in the redemption of her characters, an option Wilson would reject. Part of the problem I had with this book is the first person narrative. It reads as though a nine year old girl had been told the story and asked to put it in her own words. That’s how anachronisms like ‘she disrespects me all the time’ creep in. It irritates me, but perhaps not the children the book is intended for.

At the end of the book there is a section about the history of child protection laws in Britain and advice on how to contact Childline if necessary. Very good. Not good is a page called ‘About the Victorians’. This is historically inaccurate, appallingly simplistic and didactically imposes on children opinions about things they can know nothing about.
Another triumph for Jacqueline Wilson, because of course the book is compulsively readable and will be an instant bestseller. But I stick by my reservations and wish that Dame Jacky would write more books like Double Act, one of my favourites.

I read this courtesy of NetGalley.

Lots of other Jacqueline Wilson reviews here.

Why? This is what I ask myself when modern authors take it upon themselves to give a modern twist to classic children’s novels. Would you re-write The House at Pooh Corner so that it ends with Christopher Robin giving away Pooh to a jumble sale? Or have Mole and Ratty eaten by predators and Badger gassed in his cosy home in the middle of the Wild Wood? Sequels need not be bad books. Hilary McKay’s Wishing for Tomorrow, a sequel to A Little Princess and Five Children on the Western Front, in which Kate Saunders takes the Psammead into the First World War are both rather good. These writers, as well as Holly Webb, author of Return to the Secret Garden, probably see their work as homage because they genuinely love the originals.

Return to the Secret Garden is set in 1939 and 1940. Modern writers just can’t keep away from World Wars, it seems. Emmie lives in the Craven (Ho!) home for orphans in London when the children are evacuated to the north of England. Evacuated to, of course, Misselthwaite Manor. Emmie is rather like Mary Lennox: thin, sallow, cross. She’s broken hearted because she has to leave behind a stray cat she’s adopted. At first she finds the vast house and the endless moor around it frightening after London. Then she discovers the gardens, one gardener in particular, a robin, and the garden, now tended and full of roses. She loves it and is allowed to help look after it. But the house has its mysteries. Why does Jack, the young son of the house, seem to hate the new inmates? Who cries in the night? Who wrote the diaries which she finds in a drawer in her room? By the end of the book she has learned the true identities of Mr and Mrs Craven and Miss and Mr Sowerby and linked them to the children of the past. There is one real tragedy and a nearly happy ending. The book is a good read but, I ask again, why write it? It’s true that the children of The Secret Garden are the right age to have lived through two World Wars but couldn’t we just leave them in the past?
( Katy )

I’m sure many people who visit here are already familiar with the Greyladies imprint. Titles printed so far include adult novels by authors better known for their children’s books, like Josephine Elder and Lorna Hill, novels Noel Streatfeild published as Susan Scarlett and previously unpublished work by D E Stevenson. I needn’t go on as you can see the books for yourself on the website. There are brief reviews of some I’ve read here.

Now Shirley Neilson has a new venture: ‘A Retrospective Literary Review’, known as The Scribbler. I thought I’d buy the first issue before deciding whether or not to take out a subscription and I may be hooked. People still lamenting the demise of Folly magazine will find much to please them here, including articles by some familiar contributors. This first issue includes a short story by D E Stevenson, reviews of novels set in girls’ schools, crime and scandal in girls’ schools and a Literary Trail of the Scottish Borders which will have you searching your shelves for the books mentioned, so that you can read them again. All this and charming period illustrations, too.

If you share my interest in children’s and middlebrow books, The Scribbler could be for you.

Chris in Command, Irene Mossop (1930)
Hazel, Head Girl, Nancy Breary (1952)
Margery Merton’s Girlhood, Alice Corkran (1888)
The Exciting Journey, Norman Dale (1947)
Boys of the Valley School, R A H Goodyear (1925)

I’ve read several old children’s books this month, so here’s a little chat about them.

When I read Lois in Charge followed by Chris in Command and Hazel, Head Girl, I was going to say, ‘What a bossy lot!’ It turned out though that Hazel wasn’t bossy at all: in fact, not bossy enough. I must here fess up and say that I don’t much care for Nancy Breary, or find her books hilariously funny. She’s one of several authors about whom I disagree with Sims & Clare, much as I admire their book, kept permanently by my desk. In Hazel, Head Girl, Breary makes use of the well worn plotline of two schools merging, with resultant feuds and jealousies. Mill House and Dewpoint combine to form Hessington. The girls are determined to hate each other and stick to the habits (and uniform) of their old schools. Hazel, from Dewpoint, has been appointed head girl before term starts. Some people think this is because she’s a heroine. (She took over the controls of a plane after the pilot had a heart attack and landed it safely!) Unfortunately for her, Vice Captain Lydia (from Mill House), is determined to oust her and become head girl herself. Hazel doesn’t take a firm enough line over this rebellion and nasty Lydia nearly gets her way. The juniors are fiercely partisan and a bunch of silly little idiots. As so often in school stories, the girls seem to run everything, with teachers and lessons completely ignored. Hazel bravely struggles on, trying to persuade the girls to give their loyalty to their new school and become Hessington girls.
( the rest )

I’ve written before about the long series of Bunkle books, which I enjoy so much. Bunkle Brings it Off is the very last book, first published in 1961 and almost impossible to find except in the Fidra reprint. I missed buying it last year but was able to get it this month in the Fidra Christmas sale, so that was a win. In the penultimate book, Bunkle is seventeen, his sister married and his brother in the army but for this last hurrah he’s ten years old again.

Bunkle is bored because Mrs de Salis needs to look after her sister for a while and has taken the children with her to what Billy considers a very dull place. Naturally, no place can stay dull for long with Bunkle around. He buys a goat (as you do), and the adventure follows on from that. An empty old house with a neglected garden and no apparent way in; a missing heir; a mysterious Greek sailor who sometimes speaks perfect English and a couple of obvious villains on the loose are just part of it. By the time Daddy (Colonel de Salis) arrives, Bunkle has a theory which fits surprisingly with some research the colonel has been doing, so the whole family is involved in solving the mystery (while avoiding being shot).

It’s quite a slight story but I enjoyed it and obviously I want all the Bunkle books: only two to go now! I still prefer the early ones.

I have a spare copy of Bunkle Began It which I’ll send to someone in the UK. A wartime story, 1944 reprint, reasonable condition, no dustwrapper, illustrated by Julie Neild.
( pic )

Josephine Pullein-Thompson, one of the three Pullein-Thompson sisters, has died aged ninety. She was a redoubtable woman. There’s an obituary here.

Pictured, first edition of I Had Two Ponies, 1947, illustrated by Anne Bullen. The sisters wrote so many pony books; Josephine’s are my favourites, although I haven't kept many.

I saw this book lying around in the library and snagged it immediately. Christina Hardyment is already well known for her book Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint’s Trunk. The World of Arthur Ransome is not a full biography; for that you need Hugh Brogan’s 1984 book The Life of Arthur Ransome. Instead, it’s an attempt to place the writing of his books in the context of his very full life. It’s a short book, quickly read, lavishly illustrated with photographs of locations and characters which inspired the Swallows & Amazons series and of some very rare dustwrappers. This post is not a review; it’s more in the nature of a query.

I’ve visited quite a few writers’ houses and have always been interested and sometimes moved. Ransome moved house so often that no one place is particularly associated with him; there’s no Dove Cottage or Batemans. If you want to follow the Ransome trail, you should be setting off for the Lakes or the Norfolk Broads, as many fans do. Although I enjoyed reading The World of Arthur Ransome, it hasn’t made me want to visit these important locations, but to read the books again. I admire Ransome so much. I find he’s an author one can enjoy even more as an adult than as an eager child reader. I except from this Peter Duck and Missee Lee, the two I seldom bother with on a re-read. Missee Lee is the book for people who ‘don’t like Ransome’.

So I wondered how other people feel about literary pilgrimages? Inspiring or merely mildly interesting? I’ve found that however interesting the place is, it has no effect at all on my reading of the author’s books. For me, the text is everything.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Restoring Grace, Katie Fforde
The Far Cry, Emma Smith. Not.
The Bleiberg Project , David Khara
The Outcast Dead , Elly Griffiths
Last Friends , Jane Gardam
Treachery in Bordeaux, Jean-Pierre Alaux & Nöel Balen
My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, Louisa Young
Barbara’s Heroes, H Louisa Bedford
Death of a Dean, Hazel Holt
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Ponies on the Heather, Frances Murray
The Forbidden Library , Django Wexler
Old Filth, Jane Gardam
( thoughts )

So far, I haven’t read any of the books I put aside for Christmas reading. The way things are going, I won’t believe in Christmas at all until I hear the carols from King’s on Christmas Eve. Here are two books I’ve been reading thanks to NetGalley: Christmas at Carrington’s by Alexandra Brown and Ten Lords A-Leaping by C C Benison.

Did anyone else watch the Channel 4 series Liberty of London? Rather disappointing, I felt; not as good as last year’s BBC 2 documentary Inside Claridges. Carrington’s, the family-owned department store in Mulberry-on-Sea, is also the subject of a reality TV show, one that is carefully planned and scripted by the producer. Georgie Hart, in charge of women’s accessories, finds herself for a giddying time a media celebrity enjoying fame and freebies. This is the third book about Carrington’s and I’m not the target readership for it. If you use expressions like ‘totes’ and ‘well jelz’, if you hyperventilate at the thought of a high end handbag and refer to the goods you sell as ‘merch’, if you think of nothing but gorgeous (preferably rich) men, this is just the book for you. I am being a little unfair because after all, I did finish the book, did find parts of it entertaining and enjoyed being behind the scenes in a department store. It is a fun Christmas read with a happy ending. There’s a lot of guilt-free cake gorging and even cake recipes! It really needed better editing. I can’t be doing with a ‘wedge of tissues’ instead of a ‘wodge’, ‘bollicking’ for 'bollocking’ or ‘Wedgewood blue’ for ‘Wedgwood’.



Ten Lords A-Leaping is C C Benison’s third Father Christmas mystery. Father Tom doesn’t care for that title and asks people to call him ‘Tom’ or ‘Mr Christmas’. This book opens exactly as the title suggests, with the Leaping Lords, ten Peers who enjoy skydiving, jumping in formation to help raise money for Tom’s church. On this occasion, Tom and the PCC are also jumping, Tom landing with a badly sprained ankle. As a result, he is forced to stay at Eggescombe Hall, the grand home of Hector, Lord Fairhaven, who is one of the Leaping Lords. This introduces Tom to an incomprehensible tangle of family relationships; a family tree would have been very helpful. Soon afterwards he discovers the murdered corpse of another Leaping Lord in the Labyrinth. The victim was a thoroughly obnoxious character, so the list of suspects includes just about everyone in the house. As a priest, Tom finds people confiding in him and has to decide exactly what to tell the police. When there’s a second murder, things hot up and I really only got gripped by the book about 70% of the way through (I was reading it on the Kindle). Yet more complications are introduced, with mysteries and murders going back years and I found it all rather muddling. I wasn’t sure I really liked Tom very much; the nicest thing about him is his devotion to his ten-year-old daughter, Miranda. Her friendship with young Max, Hector’s extrovert sprog, provides the book’s only comic relief. The end of the book sets things up for the next one, which will obviously be called Nine Ladies Dancing. As a priestly detective, I preferred James Runcie’s Sidney Chambers. Ten Lords A-Leaping could have done with a little Britpicking, too.



I picked Ruth Thomas's book up at the library because I liked the cover; as good a reason as any. Luisa McKenzie has failed her Highers, so instead of going to university as planned, she’s living at home and working as a teaching assistant. She doesn’t like the job much, nor is she any good at it. Hardly surprising, as the girl is dripping wet, so much so as to strain one’s patience. I started feeling like her poor, puzzled mother and kept looking out for the mental breakdown. By the end of the book it’s clear that this year in Luisa’s life is just a growing up interlude, and I looked back on the rest with a kindlier eye.
( and now for something more Christmassy )