UK paperback. Cover illustration: Amanda Yoshida
Some of our finest contemporary children’s fiction writers come from the USA and Kelly Barnhill is most certainly one of them, with a canon of outstanding work already to her name. (See my reviews of The Witch’s Boy from July ‘20 and The Girl Who Drank the Moon from January’17.)
Kindness is everything
‘One good person can inspire other people to do good things. . . With good, the more you give, the more you have. It is the best sort of magic.’ (p 314)
As flagged by some of its cover quotes, her latest novel, The Ogress and the Orphans, can be thought of as a charming piece extolling the role of kindness in making our world a better place. It is indeed this, and its message is both true and vital. Yet, being the quality of writer she is, there is a good deal more to Kelly Barnhill’s book than such an overview implies.
Slowness is everything
Quite a number of published travel guides promote the benefits of ‘slow’ travel, where this adjective is intended as a very good thing. Their strong and potent philosophy is to take the time to really notice the features and qualities of places, to relax into them appreciatively, rather than to rush through just ‘ticking them off’.
The Ogress and the Orphans is very much a ‘slow’ novel in exactly this same beneficial sense. At a superficial level, its plot is relatively slight, and such developments as there are pretty predictable. In fact most key plot points are clearly flagged to the reader well in advance. Indeed there are even several instances of prescience by characters themselves. There is one big surprise held back until very near the end, although I think more perspicacious readers will have worked that one out for themselves too. ‘The orphans will save the day,’ announces one character, early in the story. And the reader knows they will. And they do - with a little help. It is that sort of book. All very nice. So what is it that makes this reasonably long novel so very engrossing, which it undoubtedly is?
It is so engaging because it is slow enough for the reader to notice all the felicities of the intriguing way the narrative is structured; slow enough for the intricacies, the subtleties of character to come to light, and for the reader to completely invest in the story. The breathtaking description of the first visit of the Orphans to the house of the Ogress, which takes up almost the whole of Chapter 42, is a perfect example of this ‘slowness’, capturing with effecting simplicity what feels like every previous moment of this crucial encounter.
Whilst the malevolent ‘dragon’ has no redeeming features, all the other characters (‘good’ and ‘bad’), ogre, proxy parents, crows, and even the townspeople are interestingly ambivalent, vulnerably ‘human’. But above all, the diverse group of orphans, with their varied personalities, talents and insecurities are most vividly and endearingly drawn. They are so well intentioned, so clearly the hopeful instruments of an optimistic outcome, that we identify with them and share every stage of their endeavours, somehow desperate for the denouement to be positive, even though we expect it will be.
This story cleverly takes characters and tropes from the world of Fairy Tale and skilfully recrafts them into a multi-perspective, thought-provoking journey, far more nuanced than might be expected from its basic components. Yet, despite its strong moralistic purpose, it always feels like an enchantment, never a lecture. It’s language is never over-elaborate or obscure, yet its evocative, immersive world-building leads the reader deep into the experiences of the conjured images and, equally, into the thoughts and emotions so richly explored.
Stories are everything
Amongst other telling themes, The Ogress and the Orphans is a peon to the power and potency of books and an impassioned plea for the maintenance of libraries as the cultural heart of communities. For the town that is the focus of this tale, it is the willyfully wicked burning of the library that instigates its descent into intellectual, emotional and social decline. However, the fact that some books were saved and form a central element of life in the Orphan House helps to keep the protagonist orphans separate from the culturally impoverished community around them. And, ultimately, it is the creation and redistribution of books that provide the very potent seeding of renewal.
‘The next day , people in the town work up to find that someone had carefully placed an object on their doorsteps. . . . A tiny hand-stitched book. . . Each one was astonishing - a small, lovely little marvel. (p 323)
Inclusion is everything
Alongside this, the novel gives enormously strong and positive messages about inclusion. Its chronicling of reaction to the one character who (quite literally) stands out as different, the Ogress, goes straight to the heart of both narrow-minded prejudice and open-hearted acceptance. Whilst the orphans, and indeed the crows and other creatures, instinctively respond to the Ogress with true humanity, regardless of superficial difference, for the initially prejudiced people of the town, the story is a journey towards realisation of just how much is being brought to their community by the ‘outsider’ who is really a neighbour.
Dragon slaying is everything
Perhaps most pertinent of all, however, this story is an only very thinly veiled allegory about those abominable leaders who, through a show of superficial charisma and powerful personality, entrap whole communities into passionately supporting them, whilst actually serving only their own selfish and power-crazed ends. In the character of the mayor-dragon, the author personifies those all-too-recognisable ‘leaders’ who whip-up hatred by playing on many people’s propensity to prejudice, and who re-interpret reality to suit their personal ends, labelling the actual truth as ‘fake news’. This dragon feels terrifyingly familiar when he asks:
‘Should things not be true simply because he said they were?’ (p 354)
Beneath the ‘golden’ popularity of his exterior:
‘He would make more signs. He would ban books. He would end their questions. He would make people hate the Ogress. By any means necessary. Everyone would love him again Everything would be as it should. Even if he had to burn the whole town to the ground.’ (p 359)
We have seen him before. We will see him again. There is great comfort offered here in the Orphans’ ability eventually to oust this dragon. But the author wisely, if worryingly, leaves the door open for his return. The people of Ukraine are, as I write, devastatingly and tragically aware of the reality that lies behind this allegory. This is no Fairy Tale. We must look to the ‘Orphans’, to our children, for a better future, however distant and difficult to achieve it may currently seem. Books like this one play a key role in nurturing that hope.
Time is nothing
On yet another level, this is a deeply philosophical book. Yet this aspect too is handled in a way that will reach young readers, and mean much to them. Aptly, for such a ‘slow’ story, it encompasses a rich exploration of the concept of time itself. To use the author’s own words, from her closing ‘Acknowledgements’, this story itself ‘is a process: it bends time, expands space, and allows the universe to invent itself, and re-invent itself, again and again and again,’ It has to be read to be experienced. And the time spent reading it is integral to the experience itself. Its slowness is not slow at all.
Stories in stones
The town in which the story is set is called Stone-in-the-Glen. At the heart of the town is an ancient stone, neglected and buried by the town’s rubbish. But the stone has writing on it and when the children touch it it tells them stories. The stories help them understand.
‘I sat on this stone and . . . well, my mind went all funny. I saw things that I shouldn’t have seen and remembered things that I shouldn’t remember. And then I forgot the things I had seen. Just like that, my mind went blank. But bits and pieces have come back, and I feel as though they are important.’ (p 340)
Kelly Barnhill’s book is such a stone.
More than anything
The Ogress and the Orphans is a significant contribution to children’s literature. It is also a significant contribution to humanity. It does not matter if children reading it miss some of the nuances of this wonderful writing, Words read cannot be unread. The images of story, particularly ones as potent as these, live long in the memory, affecting thought and behaviour, even if subconsciously.
‘They remembered that a story, in the mind of the reader, is like music. And discussing stories among other minds and other hearts feels like a symphony. They remembered how ideas make their own light, and how words have their own mass and weight and being.’ (p 327)
Books, children. Children, books. Books for children. Allowing the universe to re-invent itself. Please, Kelly Barnhill, do not stop writing. The loss of even one writer of your calibre is something our world and its children cannot afford.
US edition. Cover art: Yuta Onoda