Discovery
During this last year I was thrilled to discover two truly wonderful books by Australian author Ursula Dubosarsky. (See my post on The Blue Cat and The Red Shoe from September ‘18, and also my recent ‘Books of the Year’.) She was a previously unread writer for me, but such an exciting one that I have spent much of my Christmas reading time exploring as many other children’s novels of hers as I have been able to get hold of in the UK. It has been a truly exciting revelation.
Living the game
‘What had happened to each of them had happened to all of them and they knew it for ever.’ (p 134)
Like many of Ursula Dubosarsky’s books this is a challenging but richly worthwhile read.
Three children from immediately neighbouring houses live largely separate lives, knowing very little of each other, and understand even less. They are self-centred through enforced isolation. Dramatic changes are, however, precipitated when their parents decide to replace their old fences and their three gardens (‘back yards’) temporarily become one. As the children start to explore joint rather than separate lives they play a version of an ancient board game, the ‘Game of Goose’ of the title. One by one, they are pulled into the fantasy world of the game.
Now, stories of children entering and becoming part of gaming worlds are already to be found across a range of entertainment media. But any unoriginality on the part of this author ends there. The game world that these three children enter is built of powerful yet enigmatic images. The meaning of their dreamworld journeys is as elusive as it is disconcerting Yet, what they do eventually learn, as pieces in the strange race, is their need to depend upon each other, literally as a matter of life and death - and perhaps even of rebirth! This newfound sense of community, of caring for others, continues after the game, and even survives the rebuilding of the garden fences. This is a most important message for young readers, and my feeling is that this is one of those rare and special books that really needs to be a part of every childhood, along with other contemporary psychological fantasy masterpieces such as Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs, Karen Foxlee’s Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy and Piers Torday’s There May Be a Castle.
Something to write about
‘Stories can only happen because of all the things that happened before, no matter how small and sudden those things may have seemed at the time. Or no matter how large and terrible, and no matter how much much a person might prefer to live as if such things had never happened.’ (p 5)
This is a comparatively early book* by this author, and it does show. However I do not mean this as a negative. Rather that the writing here is not as terse, the content not as enigmatic, the images not as elusive, as in many of her later works. Of course this makes it more accessible, and perhaps a good book with which to begin, for young readers themselves at least. It is the story of three generations of a rather eccentric family, primarily as perceived and experienced by two half-siblings, Samuel and Theodora. As in many of her other works, this author has courage to face her young audience with the realities of life; it certainly pulls no punches in terms of some of the tougher consequences of failed and failing family relationships. However it also celebrates some of their most important and valuable bonds. More than anything, though, this novel demonstrates one of Ursula Dubosarsky’s finest talents, an ability to capture the world from the perspective of childhood. Her young characters often naively misunderstand and misinterpret the world in which they find themselves, but can, equality, sometimes display a surprising perspicacity.
Although the family concerned is Jewish, both they, and the story itself are essentially ‘humanist’ rather than conventionally religious. For those who can pick them up, there are interesting allusions to the biblical Book of Samuel, but recognising them is not essential to appreciation of the story The author’s rich messages are deeply and universally humanitarian. Much more important than religion per se is history and heritage, particularly that centring on the horrors of prejudice and hatred. Samuel’s sister, Theodora, is a habitual, even a compulsive, writer, but Samuel himself is not able to begin to write his ‘first book’ until he starts to discover more of the story of his holocaust survivor grandfather. The First Book of Samuel is a novel which is often amusing, always warmly charming, frequently moving and ultimately richly rewarding.
Lost and found
‘And at that moment, Cubby realised she was not going to turn into the person she had thought she would become. There was something inside her head now that would make her a different person, although she scarcely understood what it was.’ (p 156)
A book, perhaps, for slightly older readers than the others here (early teens plus?), The Golden Day combines remarkable lyrical prose with a story that moves from being a highly amusing comedy, to an intriguing murder mystery and ends in almost metaphysical enigma. Overall, however, it encapsulates perfectly a girl’s growth into the potential of life with all its unfathomable strangeness.
It begins as something approaching a delightful and delicious Australian equivalent of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with a small class of young schoolgirls under the sway of a supposedly free-thinking but decidedly eccentric ‘artistic’ teacher. Her initial act, for example, is to take them ‘out into the beautiful garden’ to ‘think about death.’ (p 11). However the said Miss Renshaw subsequently goes missing, possibly murdered, after involving her girls in her clandestine meetings with a young, bohemian, possible criminal, gardner/poet, only to reappear years later as a possible ghost. When the story and its telling are not hilarious, they are deeply chilling. When the tale is not hitting hard with reality, it is refulgent with romantic fantasy. When it is not mundane in its details, it is deeply mysterious in its import. And, through it all, the thoughts and feelings of young protagonist, Cubby, are quite wonderfully caught. So too are her relationships with a diverse range of classmates and teachers. The book is original, imaginative and, in it its illusive potency, quite stunningly written.
Life after life
‘In an alcove was a globe of the earth the size of a large bouncing ball. Gussie twirled it around . . . . Everything is a circle, thought Sarah watching it . . . . The world and everything in it is round. There are no edges to things.’ (p 53)
This is the most odd, and certainly the most disturbing of the books here, although not altogether in a bad way. It is a story of girls with a ‘privileged’ but isolated upbringing, playing with dolls in a dolls’ house, who may themselves be playing with dolls in a dolls’ house. It is often unclear as to who are the children and who are the dolls, which is the house and which the dolls’ house. The interrelationship becomes ever more complex and ambiguous. A girl makes up stories about the dolls, but are they imagined, or real, or do they, in fact, segue from one to the other?
And then again, is one or more of the characters actually dead? Did they die, or will they die? Is this a ghost story of sorts? It certainly touches on a the possibility of a kind of reincarnation, or perhaps it’s just that life goes on and a life lost in one place is replaced by a different life in another.
‘In the circle there can be no gaps, no spaces. Loss and gain, a child for a child.’ (p 47)
Once again the author’s handling of character voice is superb, her prose mesmerising. Like so many of Ursula Dubosarsky’s books, Abyssinia asks more questions than it answers. Her helpful explanatory postscript is illuminating but ultimately unhelpful. The book most certainly gives its readers a great deal to ponder on, and to dream about. And that is no bad thing. In fact, it is a wonderful gift.
This may be a strange book, but a strangely magical one. It haunts in more senses than the one. It will strike a chord with anyone who has ever asked, ‘Just who is playing with who here?’
International importance
Overall, the quality and range of these books has confirmed for me that Ursula Dubosarsky is a children’s writer of international status and importance. Many of her books will lift those young readers who are ready for them beyond the realms of entertainment fiction and into that of the highest quality literature for children. They are potentially life enriching, perhaps even life-changing. As an adult interested in children’s literature, it is fascinating to see how threads and themes developed in earlier works have come to gather in her recent masterpieces, The Red Shoe and The BlueCat. It is a tragedy that her novels are not better known in this country and I sincerely hope that a UK publisher of vision and integrity will recognise the need to make them more readily available over here.
Note:
Both The First Book of Samuel (originally published by Penguin Australia in 1995) and Abyssinia (ditto, 2008) have recently been republished independently. Unfortunately the new editions have some slightly disconcerting formatting problems, but it is far better for these outstanding books to be available thus than not at all.