Wilder by Penny Chrimes

Illustrations: Manuel Šumberac

Synchronicity? 

I do not know if I actually go along with Carl Jung’s belief in Synchronicity, but I have somehow always wanted to.

I recently picked up a first  edition hardback of Siobhan Dowd’s Bog Child from a second hand bookseller. It is a truly great novel, that I had not read for several years. Rereading it now reminded me just how wonderful a writer she was and what a loss to children’s literature her untimely death. 

Shortly after, I received a longstanding pre-order of the latest book, The Winderby Puzzle,  by one of the USA’s finest children’s authors Lois Lowry, a book also inspired by the discovery of a prehistoric ‘bog body’. 

Now I have just finished this new book, Wilder by Penny Chrimes, a story about a strange child emerging from what was, if not quite a bog, then at least a muddy marsh.

It struck me as at least surprising that even though I read a vast, eclectic range of books, I unintentionally ended up reading three together that are so markedly linked. Was it Synchronicity? Perhaps that’s stretching it. But, whatever, it was at least serendipity, because Wilder is an exciting new find; another very fine book to lie on top of this special little pile. 

 Painting with words

Rewilding is not just a series of actions, it is a state of mind, and Penny Chrimes book not only epitomises this in its story, but embodies it in Rhodd, its strange but endearing protagonist.

Wilder is was of those rare books that I knew I was going to respond to within the first few pages. When this happens it is more often that not the quality of writing that entrances me, and this was certainly the case here.. Early on in this book with a dominant theme of rewilding, Penny Chrimes ties the notion into a physical description of her young protagonist:

‘Rhodd . . . shook her tousled head impatiently, rewilding the sun-bright mane that Ma tried daily to tame into plaits.’ (p 8)

If, like me, this type of clever, writerly conceit makes you tingle with pleasure, then you will love this book. Regardless, there is much else about it to love too.

Penny Chrimes’ use of ravishing language in evocative descriptions, her striking, poignant images and her challengingly powerful vocabulary choices (‘susurration’, ‘skirling’) continue throughout this wondrous piece of writing. At one point  she says Cerys, Rhodd’s adoptive mother, ‘grew still. She gathered stillness about her, as if she were weaving a web every bit as fine as the spiders’, yet a thousand times more secret.’ (p 66). Just wonderful.

Rewilding 

However, Penny Chrimes also entrances and engrosses us in an involving story.

Seemingly born as a creature of the wild, Rhodd has the amazing ability to communicate with other wild creatures, not in words as such, but through mind pictures. So strong is her identification with them that she can also sometimes ‘borrow’ and actually see through their eyes. Foremost amongst these creatures is a perigrine falcon, who often hovers in the skies above her and with whom Rhodd has a very particular bond. 

Emerging fugitive and alone from the marsh and taken in by widowed Cerys, her ability to connect with the wild seems gradually to diminish as she is encouraged to try to fit is with her new surroundings. To the reader Rhodd’s loss of oneness with the creatures of the natural world, and indeed with her own true nature, is felt as almost heartbreaking.

The village in which Rhodd finds herself was once a thriving fishing port, but has now been abandoned by the river which joined it to the sea. Since the river somehow receded, to be replaced by a stagnant and lifeless marsh, its inhabitants have become bitter and resentful. Although Rhodd is welcomed with warmth and care by Cerys herself, she is treated with suspicion, fear and even hatred by the rest of the community. They already have a paranoid dread of the marsh; not only has it destroyed their livelihoods, but taken the lives of some of their children too. Now all their resentment seems to transfer to Rhodd herself.

The situation worsens as deadly sickness seeps from the marsh, not only killing all the wild creatures, but some of the villagers too. Worst of all, Rhodd’s  beloved ‘Ma’ succumbs to the illness and seems close to dearth. Further catastrophe is precipitated when landowner, Lord Stanley, arrives to evict all the villagers from their homes at heartlessly short notice. Rhodd becomes convinced that she alone can save what she loves and that she can only do that by rediscovering her own wildness. She feels that she is somehow linked with the disappearance of the river and determines to bring it back.

Once again Rhodd’s hair provides an image of her transformation, her new, wild energy:

Not even the rain could flatten her wild mane. Her bright hair drew the electrical charge to itself like a lightning conductor: it channelled and tamed its force and became a torch that channelled the brilliance of each strike’  (p 

Her transformation back into her true self is rivetingly exciting.

She was Peregrine. The face that stared back at her was savage, merciless. She did not know this Rhodd. But she liked it better than the tame, timid Rhodd who had hidden away for so long.’  (p 135)

And suddenly a story of people suffering the consequences of environmental disaster segues into that which had always been hinted at. It plunges into fantasy, into metaphor, into myth. And Rhodd and her story return to what she and it always truly were - something wilder more elemental.

Making myth

The strength of this book is not as an authentic geo-environmental case study, but as an aesthetic, an extended metaphor, an often poetic exploration of the concepts of the the wild, wildness and rewilding. Its characters become something nearer to archetypes.

Nemesis of the wild is landowner and industrialist, Lord Stanley, trying to contain nature, to force it into the service of his  own ends, out of greed for both money and power. Then there is Rhodd’s ‘Ma’, the ‘Wise Woman’, the seer, still in touch with nature and the healing property of plants, but always threatened by of accusations of witchcraft. There is the boy Gar, Rhodd’s  only human friend from the village, but who turns out to be the abandoned child of Lord Stanley, bloodline of the perpetrator, the inheritor of shame, yet determined to grow-up different, to make amends.There is the ever-faithful dog, Red, distant (thankfully luckier)  cousin of Gelhert. There is Hafren, the elemental river, lost, imprisoned  but in need of rediscovery and liberation. And over them all is Rhodd, wild-child, falcon, reconnecting with the voices of nature, seeking to reverse the sickness, the emptiness, the death of the land. 

‘Rhodd reached her arms to the sky. For anyone watching it would have been impossible to tell whether this scarred and ragged creature was praying or preparing to fly. Perhaps for her they were the same thing.’ (p 206)

Wilder is a myth for our times and, as such, is crafted beautifully, meaningfully, movingly. The climax of its story is cataclysmic, magnificent. It is an exceptional read that children will not only lap up; they will take imprint from its images and messages in a way that may just help to make our world better in the future.

Manuel Šumberac’s wonderful illustrations are a perfect complement to the text and evoke girl, falcon and marsh with a fitting power and potency. 

The Way of Dog by Zana Fraillon

Brilliantly illustrated by Sean Buckingham

This novel written in poems has promoted (a feeble attempt at) a similarly constructed review. So here goes . . . . 

TRAGEDY AVERTED

Why have I never

                                                  before

discovered books

                                by

Zana Fraillon              ?

She’s Australian, sure

but that’s no excuse.

So many of her books are published here.

I think

I’ve even heard of some of them.

The Bone Sparrow 

rings a certain bell.

I can tell. It has a familiar ring.

Even 

The Lost Soul Atlas

seems to have found its way

                                                        (somehow)

as a title 

into my library

of the half-remembered

                            half . . . 

             forgotten.

But I have never read them.

Shame.

                                No. 

                                                               Tragedy.

For now I know

just how much 

I’ve been missing out.

But thank goodness 

here          is

                                The Way of the Dog

read 

         closed

                    finished

and on my shelves.

Chance brought to it me

serendipity

my lucky day

I’d certainly say.

And it was

                                 reading heaven.

ON TREND

It seems that

fiction                

            written in                                                       V

                                                                                   E

                                                                                   R

                                                                                   S

                                                                                   E.                   (quite often terse)

has become a bit of a THING.

But 

IMHO            (as we seem to have to say these days)

its effectiveness, you see

can vary quite considerably.

Sometimes the ‘verse’ is so darned free

amounting to not much more than prose

divided into short lines                                          (Much like this, IHTS.)

so that it leaves you asking

what is the point?

At the other extreme are works like those by Joseph Coelho 

The Girl Who Became a Tree

The Boy Lost in the Maze.

The finest poetry 

in its own right

so cleverly shaped

to tell a profoundly moving tale

and tell it (breath)taking

ly.

If this is a spectrum

Pointless __________________________to___________________________Coelho

then

                                                                                                        The Way of Dog

                                                                         comes well towards the Coelho end.

          

VERSE NOT WORSE

Its all about a dog

for sure

but no way is this  . . . . . . .  DOGGEREL.

(Sorry!

 That was cheap at best.

  Not even 

  particu                larly                                funny :-)

It’s true enough though.

This is your actual poe          TREE

                                                           in full and verdant leaf.

It enchants the ear

                                delight the eye

provokes the occasional

                                 chuckle

evokes a genuine sigh.

Here are

rhythms

                  different rhythms 

                                                                      multiplemultiplemultipe rhythms 

                   co     m            Pl        eX  and

simple 

rhythms.

The rhythm of words

of

lines

and                                             spaces.

Language

and                      TY pog ra phy

Calligrams (sorry that’s too difficult)

dance and SING.

Each poem 

captures perfectly

a mood

               a moment

                                  a thought

                                                         a feeling

amusing

charming 

enchanting

H.           E.     A.                       R.  

                                     

                                  T.     breaki

                                                      ng

HEART mending

 

TELLING TAILS

But do all these poemspoemspoemspoemspoems

all these so clever words

Add + up + to = a coherent narrative 

amount to a story

worth telling               

                                              worth reading?

They surely dodododododoDO.

Here is a simple tale

that has been

told many times

before

Finding  - Loving - Losing - Grieving - Enduring - Surviving - Finding

Yet here it is

told with such deep truth

such honesty

such compassion

Here is the true doggy voice 

the voice a dog would have 

if dogs had voices.

Here is the yipping-yapping of the heart.

Here is the human in the animal 

the animal in the human and

It                                       S.

                                    D

                              N

                         E

                   C

              N

         A

    R

T

Its words move                                                                      beyond words.

TAO

And does

                    The Way of the Dog

sound (just a little bit)

like your old Buddhist philosophy

a relic from your hippy days (for those of us who ever had them)?

Then so it should.

This is ‘the way’ for today. 

A certain Benjamin Hoff  wrote The Tao of Pooh

and now we have The Tao of Dog

by Dog

by yipping-yapping-whimpering-bouncing-spinning

                                                                                    DOG

Just helped a little

by the aforesaid Zana Fraillon

who knows dog well.

For this doggy way is               

                                    love

one love

animal human 

gender race religion sexuality

ONE.

READITREADITREADIT

Read it.

                                         Just read it

            

For adults

the                       lure of                 poetry

will entrap them in a story

they might have thought

sentimental 

but which teaches them what children already know

that life           like  Christmas          is often

sentimental

and a dog is not just for Christmas

but for life.

For children

the                deeply captivating                tale 

of a dog

will draw them into poetry

its look on the page 

its sound in the ear

its feel in the heart.

Whoever

Read it ALOUD                          (It will read aloud quite magically.)

Read it aquiet                                                                 (Just for yourself.)

Like all good fiction

it will take you to 

                                   SOME . . . . . . ONE

you’ve never been

before 

Someone

not like you

and

               just

               like

               you

and return you not the same.

Just read it                                              or

MISS OUT.

POEM WRITTEN ALL ON ONE LINE, IF IT WOULD FIT, WHICH SADLY IT WON’T

(To be read all in one breath instead)

And now I’m off to an independent bookshop to buy The Bone Sparrow, The Lost Soul Atlas, The  Raven’s Song and all Zanz Fraillon’s other books they’ve got and order any they don’t have in stock and rush back home and put my life on hold and read them all as soon as ever I possibly can because I’ve already missed out for far too long. 

  

                       

Ravencave by Marcus Sedgwick

Cover illustration: Paul Blow

A remarkable body of work

It was a very major loss to writing for young people when bravely original, award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick died last year, tragically all too young. I was a huge admirer right from his first novels in the early 2000s. (See my post from November 2014). Subsequently he wrote prolifically producing work for a range of audiences, including both adults and younger children, but his finest works were almost certainly his YA titles, including what I, and many, consider his towering masterpieces, the chilling Midwinterblood and the challenging, but devastating, The Ghosts of Heaven. (See my review, again from November 2014.) Amongst many other titles, Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, a collaboration with his brother, Julian*, and one of my favourite graphic artists, Alexis Deacon, is also umissable.

In more recent years Marcus Sedgwick has struggled with serious illness in the form of debilitating CFS (or ME). He has nevertheless completed some further remarkable writing. His three most recently published works of fiction have been in the ‘accessible reading’ format, Dark Peak for OUP’s ‘Super-Readable Rollercoasters’, Wrath for the brilliant Barrington Stoke, and now the posthumously published Ravencave, also from Barrington Stoke.

Easy to read, but with depth too

His writing suits this style of book, with its comparatively short length and straightforward language, rather well. Although, actually,  it is more the case that his writing ability is such that he can create multi-layered, high quality fiction  whilst still meeting the requisites of readability. In fact, he demonstrates wonderfully that there is no need whatsoever to patronise young readers simply because they lack confidence in actually accessing text. Further, he is able to create a context where the economy of language use, its terse directness, actually enhances the effectiveness of the story being told, bringing both setting and characters to life with vivid starkness. He also succeeds in communicating deep feelings with affecting and often beautiful simplicity, creating telling images that will live long in the minds of readers.

The best of Barrington Stoke titles (of which there are many) make excellent choices for any reader, as well as fulfilling their brief of access for the less confident. But Ravencave is one of the supreme examples, alongside titles like Anthony McGowan’s Lark and Mal Peat’s The Family Tree. These are fine works of literature in their own right, 

What is it all about?

It is hard to discuss the many merits of Ravencave without spoilers. And this is to be avoided at all costs, since it is the gradual, and very clever, build up of revelations that provides the compulsive grip of this story.

Suffice to say that the basic action of the story involves the events of a single day, although extensively suplementsed with recalled accounts from the past. It centres on a young boy, Jamie, during an outing in the Yorkshire Dales with his father, mother and older brother, Robbie. The prime objective of their hike is to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased grandmother in the area where she was born. It features several (actual) locations in the Dales, which, in the story, are associated with previous generations of his family. It is a place of ghosts. However, what startles from the very first words is the way in which Jamie seems strangely distanced from the rest of his family, as indeed they are from each other. They are:

‘ . . . four souls spread across the Yorkshire landscape.’ (p 9)

Clearly this is a book very much about family, about their relationship to each other, but also about their links to the past, to heritage, to their an ancestry. Jamie needs very much to discover exactly who he is, and where he fits.

It is obvious that particular place meant a great deal to Mark Sedgwick. Each of these last three of his books relates strongly to a very singular and affecting location. And this certainly applies to Ravencave; it is not only about its characters’ relationship with each other and to the past, but also very much to the land, to the place where they do, or don’t, belong. It is a novel of both landscape and inscape.  

The author clearly had strong socio-political views too and a thread of socialism runs through his narrative. This is linked particularly to working people displaced from their livelihood by a minority of rich, powerful owners who want to get even richer by reducing their workforce and embracing allegedly more efficient, but essentially cheaper, ways of doing things. He was very much on the side of the dispossessed, and admired their resilience.

‘How do people keep on going, even when everything seems to be against them?’ (p 9)

Ultimately, however, what comes through most strongly of all from Marcus Sedgwick is a basic confidence in the kindness and caring nature of ordinary human beings.

‘In both big things and small things, most people are good. They care for each other - it’s what people do.’ (p 110)

Last book and testament

This is a story about being reconciled with death but also about embracing life. It is a  story all the more poignant being written by a seriously ill author, who must have realised he could be coming towards the end of his life. It is perhaps a last testament.

In the story, Robbie’s mum ‘ . . .  wants there to be, well . . . more. 

More to all of this, this life we fall into and fall out of . . . . (She) wants to believe the world means something. ‘ (p 44)

So I think did Marcus Sedgwick. And through his remarkable writing he showed us that it does.

    

*There are also other excellent YA reads from Julian Sedgwick, the latest of which, Tsunami Girl, is another outstanding collaboration, this time with manga artist, Chie Kutsuwada.