So Many Books... - Caddy Ever After, Hilary McKay

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