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So Many Books... - June 17th, 2006
Jun. 17th, 2006
08:48 pm - Caddy Ever After, Hilary McKay
This was the first book of The Challenge, and how great a choice, experience, start it was. A bit of character background, for those who haven't yet had the pleasure of the first three Casson family books - Saffy's Angel, Indigo's Star, and Permanent Rose. The Casson family consists of Caddy (Cadmium), Indigo, Saffy (Saffron) and (Permanent) Rose, plus, more-or-less, their parents Eve, a 'garden-shed artist', and Bill, a serious artist, whose art requires him to live in London, in a nice flat, away from the chaos in the family home. In Saffy's Angel Saffy discovers that she is actually Eve's dead twin's daughter, adopted as one of the family (and they had meant to tell her before she found out herself). The friends the Cassons keep collecting become family of a sort too, and are one of the many joys of these books. There's Sarah, who used to be 'the wheelchair girl', Michael, Caddy's driving instructor, Tom, an American spending a year with his grandmother and in Indigo's year in school, among others. But the real sorrow of people moving (or occasionally being pushed) away is also a thread through many of them.
Caddy Ever After isn't the strongest of the books, unfortunately, though the narrative structure works beautifully, with sections being narrated by the four children in turn - the others actually being made to write by Rose, whose sections begin and end the book. (The first section was the one published as a World Book Day pb - That Flying Feeling. I'd thought this felt like a cheat, especially having splurged on the hardcover from the US, but it worked well, in fact.) Rose is a wonderful character, and seeing her both from inside and out is perfect. The sections in her class are both funny and poignant, and her teacher another great new character. Indigo's sections - as he watches Rose, and more importantly - really sees her (though in a manner quite kid-his-age appropriate) are also extremely effective. As are his thoughts about the 'wheelchair girl' misunderstanding and how it would have felt from Sarah's point of view, and his determination to learn to do special as Rose does. Saffy's worry over Sarah's illness, following her dose of the 'Indigo Casson bug', and her overreaction when she freaks and runs away are also convincing. Less so is the balloon, but this isn't that serious a quibble.
The only section which is less than effective is Caddy's - this forms a smaller part of the book than Rose's, despite the title, though one of Rose's chief worries in this is Caddy's engagement to her Real Thing (whose name I've already managed to forget! Oldest Daughter finally copped onto the fact that this is a Real New Hilary McKay Novel and grabbed it as she left the house, so I can't check). From Rose's point of view, it's just right, but Caddy is too good a character to be this transparently silly. Looking at the engagement from Caddy's perspective, it seems the big set-piece wedding which-has-to-be-stopped of the kind of rom-com film you don't want to take too seriously. Of course, with Rose involved, the attempt to stop the marriage will not resemble that type of film at all.
As I said, this is the US edition, as the UK one won't be out until September, for whatever reason. Having remembered the horrendous Americanising done for The Exiles too late, I'm glad to say this was much less badly mauled. I'm a firm believer in leaving books crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans alone, but if they must be changed, it should be done as little as possible and done by someone with at least half a brain (as The Exiles clearly wasn't).
Caddy Ever After
11:01 pm - Ingo, Helen Dunmore
Book number two of the day, and another hit. I'd not heard anything of Helen Dunmore (that had stuck, at least) until C. said he was going to be reviewing The Tide Knot. As these things often happen, shortly after that Michele mentioned on Scholar's Blog that she couldn't wait to read it, as Ingo had been so fantastic.
Ingo is set in Cornwall, or I suppose, in and off the coast of Cornwall, and uses a local legend as part of its selkie tale with a twist. (Just discovered the town and legend were real now, as I was far too involved in the book to stop reading and check. One version of the Mermaid of Zennor here, and there's even a picture of the mermaid in Zennor church here, if anyone cares to see.) Shortly after the book opens, Sapphire and Conor's father (who shares the name of the local lured away forever by the Zennor mermaid) disappears, and is presumed dead when his boat is found wrecked, though neither Conor nor Sapphire believe it's true. A year, a month and a day later, Conor leaves the house without telling Saph where he's going, and she finally finds him in their cove by himself, talking to a girl. But he denies it, and clearly has lost track of time - not realising he's been there for seven hours. The next time he disappears, Sapphire goes looking for him and is met by a boy- who also looks as if he's wearing a wetsuit, but is, of course, one of the Mer. He takes her into Ingo with him - but to go there, she must not only stop trying to breathe, but must also forget Air, as she largely does. Except for Conor, who she finds, has been to Ingo before, and whom she can't and won't forget. It won't likely surprise anyone to find that time runs very differently in Ingo, and it is Sapphire who is most at risk of staying there forever. Ingo is beautifully written as well as gripping, and the sections in Ingo strongly convey the pull to it that Sapphire feels, even when she comes to see she needs to resist it. This is certainly not a book with a simple Good-Evil dualism, and the grievance of the Mer (at least as presented by Faro, the boy Sapphire meets), is not an insignificant one.
The non-supernatural part of the book could be rather unoriginal, as Sapphire struggles with resentment when her mother first must get a waitressing job to support the family and especially when she brings home someone she meets in the restaurant, in the area for some rather secret diving exploration. There's also the requisite touch of sibling rivalry, despite Conor's and Sapphire's closeness - and the nasty rumours about their father's having run off on them, rather than being lost at sea. There's a lovely wise-woman/witch, Granny Carne, with her bees and her owl's eyes - her Earth Magic. And to top off all these good things, there's even a wonderful Golden Labrador pup, who's both 100% dog and part of the counterpointing pull of the Earth Magic.
I'm quite sorry now that the review copy of The Tide Knot never turned up. I didn't read the teaser at the end of Ingo, but definitely want to read it.
11:40 pm - Third review interrupted
So, this was all going very well yesterday, as feeling a little ill made it even easier to ignore house cleaning than ever, for a good reading session. But at 7:30 I got a call from my mother, who'd just come down with a gastric flu/food poisoning/something nasty. So no reading was done from 7:30 until 12:30, when the after-hours doctor had made his call, and my mother was tucked in bed and feeling a hell of a lot better than she had been when I arrived at her house. I almost finished the third book I'd been reading, The Gift Boat, by Peter Dickinson, before turning off the light and not going to sleep for a long time and didn't get to resume reading until after 1 today, when I was back home. But I certainly wasn't going for any number of books read/reviwed prize anyway. Tonight's write-ups have been interrupted by more trips to get and take up to my mother invalid food, as well as the regular family communication, and family (four-legged) walking. All (two, yay me) reviews tonight were written while fairly stupefied with exhaustion, but more tomorrow, hopefully when wider-awake...
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