Melbourne Writers Festival 2017 - The Books

Whenever readers go away the first thing we always do is pick our holiday TBR. We do this long before thinking about what clothes or other sundry items we might need to pack. Even if we're going to a readers festival, where we absolutely know that we will buy more books, we pack books to take with us. 

And so I did. 

A mere five books. I'm getting better though. Last year I took six. And this year it was all MWF themed reads, books for authors I hoped to see. I managed to read 2.5 of them, and had 4 signed.

This year I decided to share my book buying love around Melbourne. I was also on a bit of a quest to visit some new bookshops. My recent fondness for certain corners of book tube has obviously had quite an effect on my book buying habits. 

My first visit was to Hill of Content, obviously not a new destination for me. I bought two books, but one is a present, and still a surprise so not included here. 

Next it was The Paperback Bookshop, a small gem near Hill of Content. For some inexplicable reason I'd never managed to darken the door. This time I did and came aware with a positively restrained three books. 

Then my first visit to the Readings Festival Bookshop was similarly restrained, just two books added to my smallish stack. I had been planning to by The Hate U Give as part of my MWF purchases, and so it was this day. I wasn't expecting to buy Dark Roots, but I have a burgeoning interest in short story (especially Australian short story) and remembered that this was very well thought of. 

One day I popped into Bourke St Book Grocer, a discount chain where books are $10 or less (or 6 for $50, but look how good I was- I stopped at 3!)

Soon after the downfall really started. I stumbled down the stairs of City Basement Books on Flinders St, a great second hand bookstore. I found some long sought after books for my 1001 quest. 

Then the next day I went back to get another six books that I had rather sensibly checked if I already owned. 

At this stage I knew that I needed an intervention. So I mailed 4 kilos of books home knowing that I still had some festival buying to go. I'd planned to buy the top three of these books, but the bottom two were a little surprise. There are of course more festival books that I will buy over time, I just won't be able to get them signed.

All was then going extremely well (I think over 24 hours had passed without me buying any books whatsoever!) and then I had two hours to wait at Central Station in Sydney. I tried going to White Rabbit Gallery in nearby Chippendale, but it was a Monday, and so they were shut. Nothing for it then and I was off like the proverbial white rabbit down the hole to Basement Books. And oh my- I did some damage...

And wouldn't you know it? I got home and two books had arrived while I was away!

Now if you'll excuse me I've got some reading to do. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of Roald Dahl's most famous and beloved stories. There have been two wonderful film versions made, and many people rate it as their favourite Dahl story. I've seen both the movies (quite a few times) and read the book twice, and while I liked the story well enough I didn't love reading the book that much. So recently (well actually last year - as I just found this post written languishing unpublished) when it came time to re-read the final of the six Dahl titles for my 1001 quest I was a bit hesitant, and not all that keen. But then I had the rather brilliant idea to listen to it instead. My Roald Dahl Audio Collection has James Bolam reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he does a fine job of it, although I was secretly disappointed not to have the Eric Idle version.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is of course the story of Little Charlie Bucket, who lives with his parents and four grandparents in a two room house. The family are terribly poor, all trying to survive on the meagre wage that Charlie's father earns putting the tops on toothpaste tubes at the toothpaste factory. The family subsist on bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch and watery cabbage soup for dinner. "Sundays were a bit better..... everyone could have a second helping." The Buckets saved up each year and Charlie is able to have a single chocolate bar on his birthday which he nibbles at and makes last for a few weeks.

The family follow the big news when Willy Wonka starts his competition to find five golden tickets that will allow each of the winners entry to his usually out of bounds factory on one special day only. Four impossibly named children win tickets - Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregard and Mike Teavee. There is only one ticket left to win. It's no secret I suspect that Charlie finds that very last golden ticket. More than half the story is the action and delights when the five children and their parents, or grandfather Joe in Charlie's case, tour the factory.

And what a factory it is- the factory itself is a masterpiece of Dahl's imagination. That chocolate mixed by waterfall is the best chocolate in the world. The various rooms. The buttons on the Great Glass Elevator. Sugar-Coated Pencils for Sucking. Luminous Lollies for Eating in Bed at Night. Rainbow Drops -Suck Them and You can Spit in Six Different Colours. The Oompa-Loompas, how Willy Wonka rescued them from all the dangers of Oompa-Loompa Land- the snozzwangers and hornswogglers.

I was glad that I took the time to listen to the audio, it was a lovely experience. I then rematched the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Master Wicker. We should rewatch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sometime soon.

RN did a great story about the Roald Dahl Museum to coincide with Roald Dahl Day last month (2016). Naturally it's rather high on my travel wish list.

The Outsiders

The Outsiders is a seminal YA novel, indeed its publication in 1967 is credited with creating realistic YA as a genre.

S.E. Hinton was only 15 years old when she wrote a 40 page short story that would evolve into The Outsiders. She rewrote her story when she was 16, it was accepted for publication when she was 17, and published when she was just 18 years old. It has now sold more than 15 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. S.E. Hinton grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and this is where The Outsiders is set.

Somehow I didn't really know that much about The Outsiders before I read it this month. The Outsiders tells a tale of two rival groups of teenage boys, The Greasers and The Socs (Socials). The Greasers are poor and are named for their fondness for hair oil, while The Socs are kids from the richer families in town. The story is a first person tale told by Ponyboy Curtis, and yes that's his real name. Sadly S.E. Hinton can't remember why she gave her characters names like Ponyboy, Sodapop and Two-Bit, but she has said that she's glad that she did as they are much more memorable than the common 1960s boy names. Although the Socs do  have more traditional names like Bob and David.

We're poorer than the Socs and the middle class. I reckon we're wilder, too. Not like the Socs, who jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper for being a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next. Greasers are almost like hoods: we steal things and drive old souped-up cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang fight once in a while. 

A lot is made of the different temperament of the two groups too. 

'That's why we're separated,' I said. 'It's not money, it's feeling-you don't feel anything and we feel too violently.'

So all the Socs are supposed to be sociopaths? But everyone can recognise and relate to teenage tribes and cliques. We all experienced them at high school.

Ponyboy is fourteen and lives with his two older brothers as their parents have been killed in a car accident eight months earlier. His brothers Darry and Sodapop work, while Ponyboy is still a school. Darry is strict with Ponyboy and keeps a watchful eye on him. Ponyboy doesn't appreciate his strict rules and misinterprets his methods. 

The book gets off to a bit of a slow start but things really pick up 45 pages in when there is a rather sudden, dramatic event. The rest of the book is really the fall out from this one night. While I did enjoy the story arc of the book, I found Ponyboy's voice contradictory and inconsistent. He does well at school, is reading Great Expectations and relating to Pip, and "nobody in our gang digs books and movies the way I do" (it was the sixties after all), and yet he can't spell Socs. "I'm not sure how you spell it, but it's the  abbreviation for the Socials". I wondered at the beginning if it would take me a while to settle into Ponyboy's voice - but I never was able to settle in and enjoy it. 

I'm very glad to have read The Outsiders given its fame and influence. I just wish that I had liked it more.

312/1001

Tuck Everlasting

Reading a classic, a well-loved book for the first time can be a bit of an anxious time. Such a weight of expectations can burden the book, can it ever really live up to that? Happily sometimes it can, and so it was with my first read of Tuck Everlasting, which is one of those amazing books that will become part of the Books I Wish I Read as a Child, and Books I Know I Will Reread. 

Tuck Everlasting was published in 1975 and tells the story of ten year old Winifred Foster. Winnie lives a cosseted, restricted life, an only child guarded over by her parents, her grandmother and even her house. 

On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottages with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, "Move on- we don't want you here,".

Naturally, Winnie wants out of her yard, out of her closed-off life. She wants adventures and to make her mark in the world. 

"I'm not exactly sure what I'd do, you know, but something interesting- something that's all mine. Something that would make some kind of difference in the world. It'd be nice to have a new name, to start with, one that's not all worn out from being called so much."

Tuck Everlasting is beautifully written. Natalie Babbitt has a wonderful descriptive style, but with a deft lightness of touch. 

The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox. The sun was dropping fast now, a soft red sliding egg yolk, and already to the east there was a darkening to purple. Winnie, newly brave with her thoughts of being rescued, climbed boldly into the rowboat. The hard heels of her buttoned boots made a hollow banging sound against its wet boards, loud in the warm and breathless quiet. Across the pond a bullfrog spoke a deep note of warning. Tuck climbed in, too, pushing off, and, settling the oars into their locks, dipped them into the silty bottom in one strong pull. The rowboat slipped from the bank then, silently, and glided out, tall water grasses whispering away from its sides, releasing it. 

The book asks the question "What if you could live forever?". It is a powerful musing on life and death, the cycle of life, and its meaning, written in response to Natalie Babbitt's four year old daughter waking from a dream scared of dying. 

"But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest."

My only quibble with the book is that I think at ten Winnie is too young, in at least one movie version she is 15 which I think is more suitable for her crush on Jesse Tuck. The 2002 movie version also supplied what is supposedly the books most famous quote (although I can't remember it from the book, or find it).

You can't have living without dying. Don't be afraid of death, Winnie. Be afraid of the unlived life.

I read the 40th Anniversary edition which has a wonderful (spoiler free) foreword by Gregory Maguire where he writes of the joy of rereading Tuck Everlasting. 

Books can have more than one theme. That's one of the reasons to reread them. That is why I can reread Tuck Everlasting over and over, even though when I meet Winnie Foster again standing in her front yard, I know exactly what she will do later in the book. 

What I don't know is what it will mean to me now. For I grow older, year by year. Life and joy, sorrow and understanding, they all wash against me, changing me day by day, year by year. When I return to the same place on time's Ferris wheel that I remember from the year before, the place may seem the same but I have changed. I have to look again, to see what the author's views might suggest to me, what they mean now. 

I haven't been much of a rereader (there's too many books to read for the first time), but I do look forward to reading Tuck Everlasting again. It's a beautiful book, well deserving of classic status. I had such a book hangover after finishing it, I did contemplate getting the first reread over and done with straight away as I couldn't settle on reading anything else for a few days. 

310/1001

A Pair of Jesus-Boots

A Pair of Jesus-Boots was originally published in 1969, reprinted several times in the early to mid 70s and then made into a BBC 4 part series in 1976. However, I think it's been out of print since the 70s and all the covers available appear rather dated and truly tragic.

A Pair of Jesus-Boots tells the story of thirteen year old Rocky O'Rourke. Rocky lives in the worst building in a poor square in Liverpool. He lives with his mother and his seven year old stepsister. His father is dead, although we don't ever find out why, and his stepfather is away. Rocky's mother is not really available, she likes sitting in her chair reading 'soppy' paper-back romances. Ellen-from-upstairs leaves her baby outside in all weathers in his old pram.

Number 3 was regarded by the rest of the square as the most disreputable house, and the families living there were regarded as the roughest and least desirable. Certainly they were the poorest, and the house was the dirtiest. 

Rocky hangs with a group of four other kids, they call themselves a gang, The Cats, and they are starting off a career of crime with minor acts- nicking biscuits from the back of a lorry, breaking into an empty shop. Rocky idolises his older brother who has been in jail for some time but is due out soon. 

Rocky lived mainly in a dream world, where school and home didn't have any existence for him. in his dream work he was either a successful criminal leader or a famous footballer - it all depended where his interests lay at that moment.

While I liked the setting, the story, and the Liverpudlian speech

'She'd have done better to have bought yer some warm clothes- an' a pair of shoes,' said the policeman. 

the writing never drew me into book fully, and the third person narrative was jarring. I found the characterisation and actions of Mrs Flanagan (Rocky's mother) quite confusing. Her behaviours and words are all over the shop.

Rocky's gang spend a lot of time sitting in their hideout drinking tea and playing cards. The boys in Rocky's gang are surprisingly diverse for the 60s. Billy Griffiths was crippled by polio when he was eight, and now has a limp, and gets about on a tricycle. Another of Rocky's friends is Little Chan who's parents run the local chippy. However the local villain is called Jim Simpson, which doesn't really sound all that threatening a name. 

308/1001

A Kestrel for a Knave

I'd never really heard of this book before the author Barry Hines died last year. I vaguely knew it was on my 1001 list but that's about it. I'd never heard of, or seen, the 1960s movie adaptation, Kes either. So I finally made time to read A Kestrel for a Knave last month.

It's an interesting book. Billy Caspar is a fifteen year old boy living on a housing estate with his mother and older brother. Theirs is not a comfortable or easy life. Billy's mother works and often brings a different man home at night. Billy shares a bed with his older brother Jud, who works down t'pit, and drinks and gambles in his spare time. 

then stood up and walked into the kitchen, and opened the pantry door. There was a packet of dried peas and a half bottle of vinegar on the shelves. The bread bin was empty.

Billy doesn't have it much better at school. He is the kid always blamed for whatever goes wrong, always in trouble. 

'There's always somebody to spoil it. There's always someone you can't suit, who has to be awkward, who refuses to be interested in anything, someone like you, Casper.'

But Billy is interested in something, very interested. Billy has taken a kestrel chick from the nest and reared her, trained her. He tries to borrow a book on falconry from the library but in the rather strict rules of the time, this boy who can barely read and write isn't allowed to join the library to borrow the book, so he steals one from the bookshop. 

I'd like to think that these days teachers and the school might recognise Billy's circumstance for what it is, and realise why he never has had a football kit for all the years he's been at high school. 

'I don't know, Sir. I seem to get into bother for nowt. You know, for daft things, like this morning in t'hall. I wasn't doing' owt,  I just dozed off that's all. I wa' dog tired, I'd been up since six, then I'd had to run round wi' t'papers, then run home to have s look at t'hawk, then run to school.We', I mean, you'd be tire wouldn't you, Sir?'

I thought I'd enjoy this book more than I did in the end. It's one of those books that I'm more glad to have read, than a book that I loved reading at the time. It's well written and I really liked Barry Hines' use of distinctive North England dialect, and was a bit surprised to read in the Afterword of my Penguin Modern Classics edition that he wouldn't use dialect if he was writing it again, and that he didn't think it worked on the page. I really liked his use of dialect, and I thought the speech leapt off the page. Perhaps it was my misspent youth watching endless series of Shameless but I could hear these characters talking. I have tried to read some books where dialect hasn't worked -I remember Transporting being incomprehensible, I think for dialect, but perhaps it was for other reasons. 

Barry Hines also said that "In retrospect, I think I made Jud and Mrs Casper too unsympathetic." This part is true I guess. Neither of them are in the story all that much, although they play important roles, particularly Jud. It was hard to imagine a mother as indifferent as Mrs Casper seemed to be, but there are mothers in the news every day who do much worse than Mrs Casper does here. 

Another fascinating tidbit from the Afterword was that Barry Hines found the name Billy Casper in the sports section of his newspaper as he was a prominent American golfer of the time, and in those pre-Google days Barry had no idea what the real Billy Casper looked like. It was only after A Kestrel for a Knave was published that he saw Billy Casper on television and realised that he was a "big, burly type, the exact opposite of my skinny little character". Barry even went on to describe his book as "A slim book about a no-hoper and a hawk". That it is, but it is more than that too. 

307/1001

Worzel Gummidge

I'd never heard of Worzel Gummidge or Barbara Euphan Todd before this book came to the top of my 1001 reading. Which is a bit surprising I suspect. Worzel Gummidge started his life as a character in what was meant to be a one-off  BBC childrens radio play (The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm) in 1935. Clearly he was very popular as this became the start of a ten book series. Worzel Gummidge was the first Puffin book published in 1941. 

Twelve year old Susan and her brother ten year old John have been sent from London to a farm in the village of Scatterbrook to recuperate from whooping cough. 

In December last year I read Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (see my review) which was also written in the 1930s and all three of the main characters also contracted whooping cough and had a country recuperation, which made me wonder if there was a particularly bad outbreak of whooping cough in England in the 1930s, but I couldn't find any reports to back this up. Of course whooping cough was a persistent threat at that time, children and their parents would be very familiar with the illness. 

Whooping-cough had left them cross and quarrelsome. They weren't allowed to go near other children because they were still infectious, and all the grown-up people of the place were too busy to be bothered with them. 

A perfect recipe for an adventure. 

They couldn't spend much time in the lofts because the dry hay-dust got into their throats and made them cough. They weren't allowed to play in the farm kitchen except on soaking days, because Emily said, 'Fresh air is the best doctor.'

So each morning John and Susan are bundled up into the winter clothes and set outside for a "nice brisk walk" and only to come back for lunch and dinner each day. Soon they meet Worzel Gummidge, a perfect companion for the probably-still-infectious. Worzel is a scarecrow with a face made from a carved turnip who comes to life. Worzel is a bit BFGesque in some of his sayings, although of course Worzel predated The BFG by some thirty years or so. 

'I heard you argufying.'

The child and Worzel have some gentle, wholesome, 1930s rural adventures and scrapes- there is missing laundry, a village fair and stealthy nocturnal outings. 

All the old ladies from the almshouses were swooping down on hats and petticoats. They jerked their arms in and out of coat-sleeves. They jostled one another, flapping and chattering like the seagulls that follow the plough on windy March mornings. 

Worzel Gummidge became an endearing TV series in the late 70s, early 80s- starring Jon Pertwee, forever famous as the third incarnation of Dr Who. I'm not sure if it was ever shown in Australia, I presume it was, I don't think I ever saw it, I wouldn't have been much interested at the time. 

306/1001

Hating Alison Ashley

Hating Alison Ashley is an iconic Australian childrens book. Released in 1984 I've only been aware of it for the past few years I guess. Erica Yurken is in Year Six at Barringa East Primary School. She's witty and a bit of a hypochondriac. 

The sick bay was my favourite place at school. It was exciting to lie hunched up and pretend that your appendix had burst when kids stickybeaked in through the window. And also, it was the best place in the school for gaining classified information. 

Barringa East is a disadvantaged area in suburban Melbourne.  So it's a bit of a surprise when Alison Ashley shows up one day because of a change in school zoning. Alison Ashley is a bit too perfect, and she's perfectly easy to hate. 

She was wearing this soft blue skirt, and a shirt the colour of cream, with not a crease or a wrinkle nor a loose thread anywhere. Expensive-looking plaited leather sandals. Long, pale gold hair caught back with a filigree clasp, and tiny gold roses, the size of shirt buttons, in her ears. Her skin was tanned and each cheek had a deep, soft dimple. Huge navy blue eyes, the colour of ink, fringed with dark curly lashes. She was the most beautiful, graceful, elegant thing you ever saw in your life. 

So easy to hate. Then she opens her mouth.

She turned out to have a reading age of 14.6 years. She knew all the rivers of northern New South Wales in perfect order. 

Erica is used to feeling pretty superior at Barringa East, and she doesn't like the feelings that Alison Ashley stirs in her. 

My feelings of inferiority swelled into dislike, and the dislike into absolute loathing. 

All by lunchtime! Hating Alison Ashley is just as funny as when it was written more than 30 years ago. It's truly deserving of classic status. I believe that Hating Alison Ashley is still taught in Australia high schools, which is a bit of a shame, not that it shouldn't be still taught, it should. But I think it's much more suitable to kids in upper primary. 

I'm really glad to have read Hating Alison Ashley at long last. Sure, some of the references may be a little dated now, but it's really very few, and over thirty years down the track but the characters are timeless- we all went to school with Barry Hollis, the school bully, and with Alison Ashley. We might even have been Erica Yurken.

Shortlisted CBCA Book of the Year 1985

There are play and movie versions of Hating Alison Ashley- I haven't seen either. 

305/1001

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Ballet Shoes

I'd been looking forward to reading Ballet Shoes for some time, and presumed that I would love it. For some reason I thought I would find it a bit like The Secret Garden i.e. just delightful (see my review). Noel Streatfeild wrote one of my favourite books of my childhood- The Children of Primrose Lane- still one of my earliest memories of reading. I remember reading it over and over again. I don't remember the story all now, but I remember the book itself. Indeed, my original copy has survived my childhood and still sits on my bookshelves. I've been meaning to reread it after I fell in love with Ballet Shoes, but now I'm a bit worried that it might spoil the memories.

You see I didn't really like Ballet Shoes. 

I found it boring. It was a bit of a slog to get through. I found the tone so passive that I had to push myself to spend any time at all reading it and I was constantly eyeing off other books that I could have been reading, and enjoying, instead. 

Ballet Shoes tells the story of three orphaned girls found in remote parts of the world and brought back to London by their benefactor and guardian, Great-Uncle Matthew, or Gum as the girls call him. Gum is a fossil collector and explorer who has a large house "at the far end of the longest road in London" where he deposits the girls and leaves them in the care of his great-niece Sylvia and Nana, her nurse. 

Gum had been a very important person. He had collected some of the finest fossils in the world, and though to many people fossils may not seem to be very interesting things to collect, there are others who find them as absorbing as sensible collections, such as stamps. 

The girls are brought up by Sylvia and Nana as Gum, whilst beloved by all, has left them alone without the funds to go on. It's the 1930s and things are tight. Although they go to Harrods for a new dress when needed, but spend much of their time walking to the Victoria and Albert and back. The V&A was mentioned a lot and each time made me think of my visit there in 2013. 

I did find some historical aspects rather interesting. The girls all attend Madame Fidolia's Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training and much of the book is taken up of rather intricate detail of the practicalities of their lessons. But as each girl turns 12 they are allowed to work in the theatre, and they must apply for a Licence to do so from the city of London. This seemed a highly regulated process, and there was even a copy of the Application for Licence included, which seemed an unusual feature for a book originally published in 1936.

Also intersting was that the death of a king (King George V in January 1936) could have a profound effect on how long a show would run. The populace of London were so saddened by his death that "Nobody felt in the mood for pantomimes." It's hard to imagine that now. 

All three girls contract whooping cough one year. 

Whooping cough is a miserable disease, but if you must have it, the worst place is the Cromwell Road; it is so far from the Parks and any place where you can whoop nicely in private. They spent the first part of having it in bed, but after a bit they got well enough to get up, and then it was most dressing. The weather was ghastly- very cold, with those sort of winds which cut your legs and face, and often it rained and sometimes half snowed, and they whooped too much to go on an underground, or a bus, and they were all cross, and they got tireder and tireder of walking to the Victoria and Albert and back. 

I did find Ballet Shoes disappointing overall in the end. There just wasn’t enough hook into the story for me I think. And I was never that interested in the girls story, which is surprising as it started out so well- 3 orphans in quick succession in the first chapter! 

And can Kathleen Kelly have been wrong all these years? 

The particular scene isn’t in that montage, but at one stage in You’ve Got Mail Kathleen Kelly says:

“I'd start with Ballet Shoes, it's my favorite; although Skating Shoes is completely wonderful.” 

I'm not so sure. 

304/1001

Pagan's Crusade

I’ve been wanting to read Catherine Jinks for quite some time. I saw her talk at my local library quite a few years ago now- it must be more than 5- and have been keen to read her work ever since. A friend is a fan and especially enthusiastic. Although I must admit that this title in particular wasn't really in my sights, and the cover doesn’t really do it for me. 

Twelfth century Jerusalem is really an odd choice of setting for a kids book isn’t it? It did put me off a bit, but then I really wouldn’t want to read adult books covering this era either. It’s also not a setting or time that I know an awful lot about, and I presume most kids wouldn’t either. Although my copy published in 2000 shows it was reprinted 7 times since 1993, i.e. roughly once a year, so it must have been quite popular. 

So, our story starts with 16 year old Pagan Kidrouk joining up to become a squire with to Lord Roland Roucy de Bram, a Templar Knight. It’s clear that Pagan needs a job quickly and is in some sort of difficulty. Pagan describes himself as “godless mercenary garbage”. Pagan was raised in a monastery and has the rare skill of being literate and educated in a time when most people aren't and even Lord Roland himself cannot read. 

'My lord, with all respect, you shouldn't take my learning too seriously. It might look impressive to be able to read, but that's because you can't read yourself. When you learn to read, all you can do is read.'

The story is told in three parts, each quite separate really, occurring over several months in 1187, with the mounting threat of invasion by Saladin- a real historical person and event, but who I'd never heard of before, and it felt a little Lord of the Rings to me (not that I've read that, only watched the movies).

It's a peculiar feeling- like a cold wind on your heart. The fact that it's actually happened. It's actually happened. You live with it all your life, like a cloud on the horizon, and suddenly the storm is overhead. They've come at last, after all this time. The Infidels. Practically on the doorstep. And it's not a surprise. That's what's so awful. Everyone born here- we all knew they would come. Everyone born here is born waiting. 

Pagan's story is told in his first person rather modern voice, which I think I found a bit discordant to start with but by the middle of the book I was almost swept up in the story, and did find it quite humorous. I do really like Catherine Jinks’ descriptions. And this one of an alley is astonishing.

It’s like entering someone’s intestines. Narrow, slimy, smelling of dung. A cloud of flies settling like a cloak over your head and shoulders. Bones. Rats. Sludge from the nearby tannery. 

I ended up enjoying Pagan's Crusade much more than I expected to, settling in enough to find the humour, especially in the middle pages, and found it a bit evocative of Monty Python's Holy Grail in places. Pagan has an oft repeated refrain "Christ in a cream cheese sauce" which I found really odd. Would they have had cream cheese sauces in medieval Jerusalem? I suspect not. Indeed why call your main character Pagan? Would people have been called Pagan then? Did it mean something else? Catherine Jinks is very clever, it must mean something, and I'm just not clever enough to work it out. 

There came to be five books in the Pagan series, so these stories of medieval Jerusalem clearly had a broader appeal than I would have thought. I do think that if I read Pagan's Crusade again that I'd like it even more. I'm very glad to have dipped my toes in Catherine Jinks' work, and look forward to reading more of her in the future. 

302/1001

http://australianwomenwriters.com

The Borrowers

I just finished a re-read of The Borrowers, and enjoyed it just as much as I remembered it. Mary Norton's classic story came out in 1952. I first read it as an adult, only about 5-10 years ago I think. I remembered that the Borrowers were a family of tiny folk that lived hidden away in a grand house and “borrowed” the things that they’d needed from the house, but I wasn’t able to really remember any of the specifics. I remembered that I’d liked it, and was happy to find that I really liked it again on this rereading.

The basic setup feels quite a lot like The Secret Garden (see my review), where a lonely child who grew up in India is rattling round a big old country house. But this is where the similarities end, and here one day the boy finds a family of small people who live under the floor boards, the Clocks. But the child is not the hero here, it is the Borrower daughter, Arrietty, a lonely girl who is the only child of the solitary family of Borrowers left in the house. 

'Oh, I know papa is a wonderful Borrower. I know we've managed to stay when all the others have gone. But what has it done for us, in the end? I don't think it's so great to live on alone, for ever and ever, in a great, big, half-empty house; under the floor, with no one to talk to, no one to play with, nothing to see but dust and passages, no light but candlelight and firelight and what comes through the cracks.'

Arrietty's father, Pod, is the Borrower for the family, and he generally has the run of the place because there are only three humans inhabiting the house- Great Aunt Sophy a bedridden invalid who likes to partake of a decanter of Madeira each night, Mrs Driver the cook and Crampfurl (a most splendid name) the gardener. That is until the boy comes to stay, and Arrietty’s father Pod is "seen".

The Borrowers is such a wonderful, make believe world, vividly told, it makes me wish that there were little people living under my floor borrowing from my possessions to survive. 

There have been a number of film versions of The Borrowers over the years. All seem to need to update and modify the original story in some way. A 1997 movie has John Goodman as a developer looking to knock down a Borrower house. A 2011 BBC telemovie starring Stephen Fry and Christopher Eccleston is a Christmas themed adaptation. Happily I found it lurking unwatched on my hard drive recorder the other day. I've watched it now, and even better I find it is available on youtube complet en francais! 

Sounder

As soon as I began reading Sounder I realised that I was in similar territory to another 1970s Newbery winner- Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry which I read a few months ago (see my review). Sounder is the slightly older of the two books, published in 1969, and is historical fiction telling the story of a black sharecropping family in the South of America at an unspecified time, although I can't remember a car ever being in the story even for the police so I suspect it is set quite some time before the Depression era tale of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Sounder is quite an unusual book to read, as Sounder, a dog, is the only named character. Sounder lives with a family in their isolated, unpainted, uncurtained cabin. Actually Sounder lives under the cabin, sleeping on coffee sacks under the stairs. Sounder found the father when he "wasn't more'n a pup."

'Sounder and me must be about the same ag,' the boy said, tugging gently at one of the coon dog's ears, and then the other. He felt the importance of the years- a s child measures age- which separated I'm from the younger children. He was old enough to stand out in the cold and run his fingers over Sounder's head. 

The family are very poor, eeking out their rather marginal existence. The boy is keen to learn, and keen to go to school but the eight mile walk each way is too much in the winter cold. Sounder and his master, the boy's father, go out hunting each night, but they have been returning empty handed for some time. There were no racoon or possum hides to sell, and no meat for the family to eat. Winter also meant no crops, no work, and so no pay.

There are some interesting quotes about books, stemming from William H. Armstrong's work as a teacher I suspect.

The boy had heard once that some people had so many book they only read each one once.

It shouldn't have surprised me I suppose but it was a shock to have it pointed out that "no mailman passed and there was no mailbox" for the poor and illiterate. At one stage the boy retrieves a book from the rubbish. Rather intriguingly for someone who has taught himself to read by reading signs in stores he finds himself holding a book of Essays by Montaigne.

It was a book of stories about what people think. There were titles such as Cruelty, Excellent Men, Education, Cripples, Justice, and many others. The boy sat down, leaned back against the barrel, and began to read from the story called Cruelty.

But the words were "too new and strange". Sounder is a slim little volume, a mere 90 pages, but it sure packs an emotional punch. The boy's father is driven to do a desperate act by poverty and lack of food for his family. These are resilient, strong people living most difficult lives. There is indeed Cruelty and violence.

William H. Armstrong was a white teacher, and some people have criticized that he can't tell a black story. In an Author's Note at the beginning of the book he tells of a black man he knew in his childhood. This man told him the story of Sounder.

It is the black man's story, not mine.... It was history- his history. 

297/1001

Where the Lilies Bloom

I'm no expert in Appalachian literature, although I did enjoy Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods a few years ago, and so I'd never really heard of Where the Lilies Bloom until it came time to read it as part of my 1001 quest. It's a powerful read. Coincidentally I've read a few books this year about poor sharecropping families in the American South. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (see my review) and Sounder (review soon-ish).

Where the Lilies Bloom tells the story of the Luther family who live a hard, rather meagre existence in a run down home in a remote part of North Carolina. Mary Call is our 14 year old narrator. She lives with her father Roy Luther, and her siblings Devola, Romey and Ima Dean. Roy Luther is quite unwell and preparing himself and the family for his death. He asks Mary Call to take over when he's gone, to look after the family, and stop her older sister the beautiful yet "cloudy-headed" Devola from marrying the slovenly, mean neighbour and landlord Kiser Pease. It's a lot to ask.

So it is that Roy Luther has requisitioned me  to give him a simple, homemade burial when the time comes. After I am sure his heart and breathing have stopped, I am to wrap him in an old, clean sheet and take him to his final resting place which will be within a stand of black spruce up on Old Joshua. We have not talked about how I am to get him there. 

It's all a rather intricate set up for the classic orphan tale. The children's mother has already died "of the fever" four years earlier, and Roy Luther is ailing rather quickly. It's a hard enough life with a father to head the household, but is about to become harder still for four children living alone in the wild mountains of Appalachia.

He's let things beat him, Roy Luther has. The land, Kiser Pease, the poverty. Now he's old and sick and ready to die and when he does, this is what we'll inherit- his defeat and all that goes with it.

But Mary Call is tenacious, and this is a story of determination and persistence in the face of true adversity. No first world problems here. Their house is crumbling around them, they have very few resources, and a harsh winter is setting in.

I'm not going to let this beat me. If it does, everything else will for the rest of my life. 

The Luther family turn to "wildcrafting", gathering wild buds, roots, leaves and bark, to make money. In an afterword the authors tell that they were inspired to write Where the Lilies Bloom after they moved to Boone, North Carolina and met people earning their living this way. "There are whole families who occupy themselves thus and earn a fair living at it, but this is not an occupation for the lazy, the squeamish of the fainthearted."

Where the Lilies Bloom is full of strong, memorable characters, I think I will remember them for some time.

297/1001

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry wasn't a well known book for me. I came across it in my 1001 quest, and have seen it in a few lists about the place since then. I'm so glad I got to read it, it's such an amazing book. I'm just sorry that it took me too long to read- 3 weeks for really quite a short book, but I just haven't had the time for reading these past few weeks. It's a mark of a great book that it can still shine even when the reader is forced to neglect reading as much I have been recently.

A story of a black family living in rural Mississippi in the early 1930s, which was a tough time of course. Our narrator is 9 year old Cassie the only daughter of the Logan family. Cassie lives with her three brothers,  her mother and grandmother in a small house on land bought by her grandfather after the abolition of slavery. The family grow cotton on their farm, Cassie's father is forced to leave the family home to work on the railway, while her mother teaches at the local school.

The writing is splendid, and there is a lot of tension and suspense, with a constant threat of nocturnal violence.

The lead car swung into the muddy driveway and a shadowy figure outlined by headlights of the car behind him stepped out. The man walked slowly up the drive. 

I stopped breathing. 

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is an incredible account of the systemic racism of that era. Black children went to segregated schools. Their schools were only open from October to March as the children were needed to work in the fields by their poor sharecropping families during the growing season. While the white children started school in August. The white children are driven to school in a school bus, while the black children are left to walk 1 to 3 1/2 hours to school each way. All things designed to repress the black kids before they even got any sort of start at an education.

Author Mildred D. Taylor used the oral history told to her by her father to create a series of nine books about the Logan family. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a powerful exploration of ingrained, systemic racism, no mere casual racism here, but a deep hatred and sanctioned contempt at a time when violent criminal acts were condoned and ignored. Sadly these feelings have echoes today as we still need social campaigns such as BlackLivesMatter.

There are things you can't back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it's up to you to decide what them things are. 

288/1001