Cover: Dawn Cooper
‘All around me, the world whispered its secrets, and I felt myself listening harder than I ever had before.’ (p 55)
Following on
US author Lauren Wolk’s Wolf Hollow is one of the all-time great works of literature for young readers. Deeply rooted in the time and place of its setting, ruralAmerica in 1943, it is one of those novels whose themes are so important and whose writing is so outstanding that it is of international stature. It has been compared to To Kill a Mocking Bird and, although inflated parallels are often thrown out as part of the hype for contemporary books, in this case the comparison has a good deal of validity. Wolf Hollow is very much its own book, but its quality and importance are indeed something close to Harper Lee’s classic.
Since Wolf Hollow, this author produced two further outstanding stand-alone novels for young readers, Beyond the Bright Sea and Echo Mountain, of which the second is a particular favourite of mine, a real gem of a book. (See my review from July 2020.)
Now, excitingly, Lauren Wolk has written a direct sequel to Wolf Hollow itself. And another truly wonderful novel it is.
My Own Lightning is a true sequel, rather than another novel in a sequence, in that it follows on directly from the first, taking up the situation of its main characters only a short period of months after we left than in the first. Whilst it might be possible to read this second book out of sequence, picking up by implication something of what happened in the first, its true potency and importance really depends on having read the first. We already need to have experienced, alongside her, all that protagonist Annabelle went through in Wolf Hollow, which amounted to a very great deal.
Rural life and lightning
Whilst the setting of both books is during the Second World War, this is not a war story, in fact the war impinges on this second book, less even than in the first. There are no more than a few references to its impact on actual life in the American countryside. What this recent historical context does give Lauren Wolk is the opportunity to conjure, and conjure very vividly, what was still at that time the rather simpler, more rustic daily life of a small community. And where this really pays dividends is allowing both author and reader to focus very intensely on people, on their relationships with each other and with the natural world around them, without some of the complications of modern living. It acts as a fictional microscope providing a quite wonderful close-up on the core humanity that is her focus. Let other books be about contrmporary issues, this one is about the heart of who we are, how, in essence, we see the world.
The brilliant core concept of this novel is built around Annabelle being struck by lightning whilst caught outdoors during a severe thunderstorm. Atlthough not actually killed, thanks to the speedy intervention of a unknown rescuer who is able to resuscitate her , she subsequently experiences a startling intensifying of her senses, including a remarkable ability to interpret the thoughts and feelings of animals. However, it is when what her younger brother calls her ‘superpowers’ inevitably fade away, alongside her burn scars, that Annabelle begins to explore how being struck by lightning has truly changed her.
Writing skill
My Own Lightning is the work of a mature writer, a superbly skilled crafter with words, as well as with narrative structure. This is another ‘slow’ book (see my recent review of Kelly Barnhill’s The Ogress and the Orphans), again in a very good way. It allows the characters to seep into you, until they become a part of you and you them, in that very special way we are all part of each other. It is quite brilliant at evoking the days, hours, even minutes of Annabelle’s life; when she helps prepare a meal, we get to know what type the potatoes are, precisely how she cuts them, and, most pertinently, exactly how they smell. Through such details, of her thoughts and feelings as well as her actions, we live her story with her, vividly, intensely. And most miraculously of all, her lightning enhanced senses heighten our awareness of her vividly conjured world, and, in consequence, of our own world too. Lauren Wolk very cleverly echoes feelings and behaviours both in the characters’ relationships to animals, and in the ‘personalities’ of the creatures themselves. Her implication that one of the truest ways of seeing people’s worth is by observing their response to animals often holds true.
One becomes two
Sequels to great books very often do not have quite the impact of the original. It is almost a necessary corollary. But if this is true of My Own Lightning then it is only because it has such enormous boots to fill. It is still an outstanding book. However, I do think there is good reason to now consider the two novels as a conjoined pair. For protagonist Annabelle, and indeed for the reader, the second book is very much a resolution of the first. If the first story is about trauma, then the second is about its healing. If the first is about some of what is very wrong about our world, then the second comes some way to helping understand how it might be improved. In learning how to harness her own lightning, Annabelle discovers at least a degree of understanding, forgiveness and acceptance, of herself, of others and of past events. She shows us a way forward. But although the narrative’s resolution is warm and hopeful, it is not simplistic or sentimental. Annabelle is ultimately a realist, albeit an optimistic one. Her story holds us with emotion in a way that moves us deeply.
This is not a book for those seeking the thrills and spills of rollercoaster fiction. This is quite a different ‘lightning’ story from Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. But instead of excitement it has depth and subtlety, its own engagement, not with adventure but with discovery of self, of others, of a world with much that is difficult, but also much to be thankful for.
Whatever age, gender, race, creed, colour, sexuality, we all, like Annabelle, need to discover our own lightning.