Cover: Ben Mantle
‘She knew what was going to happen because it already had happened.’ (p 176)
Refreshingly original
Sometimes children’s books, even good ones, can be rather unoriginal. Perhaps this is not surprising as publishers tend to follow trends. Nor is it altogether a bad thing. What children often want to read is ‘more of the same.’ Nevertheless it is good to come across something that feels refreshingly different. Its setting, in and around Stockholm, where its author now lives, certainly gives The Sky Over Rececca a distinct perspective and atmosphere. We may share the same sky, but here it is seen from unfamiliar ground, through colder air. Its light is light on snow; sometimes daylight, sometimes electric light, even lamplight, candlelight, or starlight And the change is very welcome. Its buildings too, its environs, have a intriguingly different feel, and this seems to permeate the story itself. However, location is far from the only thing that makes this a work of rare distinction.
I have seen this novel compared, on social media, to Tom’s Midnight Garden. This earlier title is also referred to in the text as a book much-loved by its protagonist, Kara, so I suppose that reinforces the connection. But, to me, the comparisons are relatively superficial. Yes, both involve time-slips, engender a relationships with someone from an earlier generation, as well as a good deal of skating. However, rightly treasured though the Philippa Pearce classic is, this feels like a far more complex, multi-themed book. If anything it reminded me as much of Christopher Edge’s wonderful The Longest Night of Charlie Noon. Although, even saying this, I do not wish to detract from the deeply affecting originality of Matthew Fox’s debut.
Affectingly taught writing
The first thing to strike me about this book was the economy of its prose, its almost overly-abrupt style of writing, Much of it is composed in short, clear sentences with frequent line breaks. I am certainly someone who admires economy and precision of language, but initially what felt like the brittleness of this writing rather disturbed me. It seemed almost as if it had been deliberately written for less confident readers. Yet, as the story unfolds, this rather fractured prose starts to feel completely right. It begins to reflect the location and mood of the piece very potently. It catches the thoughts and feelings of its young protagonist, both her uncertainties and her commitments, most affectingly. It evokes some startling events with a powerful immediacy. Ultimately, it develops human relationships with remarkable depth and sensitivity, despite, or more accurately because of, its directness of language and style.
The present past
The characters Klara meets when she slips into the past, Rebecca and her brother, are Jewish children in hiding from the Nazis during WWII. This theme is handled with compassion and strongly promotes the importance of remembrance. However, this is not essentially a war story, or even a story about war. It is a story about time, its mystery, its fragility, and the way the past is intimately interwoven into all aspects of life. The time jumps experienced by the characters in the story are not altogether logical, but then that is the point. This is not an intellectual exploration of the concept of time, it is rather a subjective, emotional experience of the power and presence of the past. It is almost metaphysical. As T. S. Eliot wrote, ‘All time is eternally present.’
Death and life
This is also a book about death. It explores both darkness and death. It contains several deaths of characters hugely significant in Klara’s life. But it is not a morbid book, nor a depressing one, and it is certainly not a sentimental one. For, just as the past finds a way into the present, so do lives lost in the past, distant or recent. Those who have died are part of our now, whilst we remember them.
It is also a book about light and life, love and friendship; the love of mother and daughter, of a grandfather and granddaughter, the real friendship of two girls who meet across time, and of a girl and a former bully, who once fought each other, but do so no longer.
Stardust
It is a very fine book. It has much to say to us that is beautiful, happy-sad, brilliant-dark. It tells us the time that separates us from the stars is vast. However, it also tells us that the time that separates us from the past is but a sheet of ice. Sometimes we can see through it vaguely, sometimes it cracks. The time of the stars and the time through the ice are the same time. They are our time, for we are all stardust. Parts of the past are here in the present. We must light a candle for them. The candlelight and the starlight are the same thing. The sky over Rebecca is the sky over us all.
‘Astronomical twilight.
The stars were out.Lars held the candle. . . .The flame shivered for a moment and guttered, and we thought we’d lost it, but it held.It stayed alight, sheltered by our hands.’ (p 269-270)
