‘it’s the darkness that switches on the lights’
About poems and novels
I was hugely taken with Matt Goodfellow’s recent book of poetry, Let’s Chase Stars Together (reviewed here August ‘23), so I have been waiting eagerly for this new book to come out. I was not disappointed. The Final Year goes straight into my Books of the Year and really should not be missed.
Novels told through a linked sequence of poems (as opposed to long narrative verse*) have become something of a thing recently. In the case of the best ones, it is a stunningly good thing too. However most of the truly outstanding examples are more YA books than true children’s (MG). The very best YA examples are, in my view, two by Paul Coelho, The Girl Who Became a Tree and The Boy Lost in the Maze. Both are challenging, the latter particularly, but they are also staggeringly wonderful.
There are a few good MG examples though. Probably the best are Love that Dog, from outstanding American author, Sharon Creech and The Way of Dog, from Australian children’s writer, Zana Fraillon.**
Until now, that is, because, for me, Matt Goodfellow’s new book jumps right to the top of this distinguished little pile. What makes it so very special? Firstly, it succeeds both as outstanding poetry and outstanding fiction, with the one totally integral to the other. This story could not be told as effectively, or as effectingly, in any other way. Further, both of the ‘dog’ books mentioned above sometimes teeter on the verge of sentimentality. The Final Year is, at times, highly charged emotionally, but it is never sentimental.
About a boy
Nathan (Nate) is the book’s narrator and the poems which collectively constitute the novel are purportedly his. Matt Goodfellow catches the voice of this young working-class boy brilliantly, with enough school-kid-speak to convince, without it being intrusive. But it is not only Nate’s playground language that is so compelling. Here is the authentic thinking and behaviour of a 10/11-year-old, a complex interaction of naivety and awareness, expressed through a refreshing honesty and directness that can often provoke the reader to laugh with (but rarely at) him. Equally, it can induce real pathos and, above all, engender rich identification. Nate is a boy with a challenging home life, and his own ‘beast’ too, but his experience of moving from the end of Year 5 through his final year in primary and up to the start of secondary school will contain much that so many children will know, or come to know.
About words
Yet one of the many very remarkable things about this book, is that, at the same time as convincing us completely of Nate’s voice, Matt Goodfellow succeeds in crafting some exceptionally good poetry. Real poetry, not simplistic verse. Real poetry which says things that matter and says them powerfully, potently.There are many moments of tender poignancy, some of devastating awfulness - and some that are both, and one.
He uses rhyme to particular effect, but doesn’t overuse it. He can play with words cleverly, sometimes subtly ( ‘prison’ exchanged for ‘prisom’ on p 54). He arranges words and lines in telling rhythms and patterns, pulling an emotional punch until it lands in the gut. But more than anything he condenses experience into a small number words, perfectly chosen to capture the experience of a telling moment, and to cut straight to the heart.
In one episode of his excellent podcast, Just One Poem, another poet, Dom Conlon, says: ‘Show me a poem that runs over two pages and I’ll question the poet’s commitment to the craft. Brevity is the brief.’ Although there are actually many exceptions to this, I do know what he means. A good poem does not simply recount or record, it distills. If a good novel is a gastronomic feast, then a poem is the essence of a flavour. But it brings you to smell, to taste, to know that flavour as an intense, shared experience. And that is exactly what Matt Goodfellow’s poems do here. Each is a brief but intense evocation of a thought, a feeling, a hope, a fear, a day, a lifetime. The result is that you only have to read a few dozen words, before you know Nate, his family and friends intimately. You can picture his home, his school, his classroom, his teachers. You share so much. Because of this intensity, you feel so much tragedy and so much joy, so much humanity, through the eyes of one eleven-year-old boy. Prepare to shed tears.
Many things shine through this thrilling writing, Matt Goodfellow’s own intimate and revealing insight into English primary school life, his thorough research and sensitive handling of the childhood physical and psychological conditions he covers, but perhaps most of all, his deep understanding of children and how they think and feel.
About wings
Running through this novel is an enthusiastic recommendation for David Almond, which is just tremendous. I love Nate’s (Matt Goodfellow’s) taste in books. References to Skellig particularly permeate the work; references to the book itself, to its story, its characters and its symbolism. both explicitly and sometimes more obliquely. It is a real homage to Skellig, but above all, is is is an exploration of the ways in which a great book can influence and support a young life., lend its images to reality, heal real pains, support real growth and feed real aspirations.
The Final Year needs to be read to and with Y6 children across the country, and I am sure it often will be. When it is, it will encourage many to try David Almond’s books too, especially Skellig. And, if and when they do read Skellig, they will be able to close the circle and return to re-read The Final Year. They will then be able to hear more of it resonances and appreciate even more of its layers. Ultimately, both books will allow countless children to grow with and through them.
But the remarkable thing about The Final Year, the most remarkable thing of all, is that the whole story, the story itself, is a poem. It captures experience with hyper intensity. It reaches into the heart of things.
It is darkness that turns on light.
It is a boy who is yet too young and already too old.
It is the wondrous magic of books and libraries.
It is moving up and moving on.
It is friends who are and aren’t, and always were.
It is a child who is a mother and a mother who is a child (but still loving, in her way)
It is all the huge potential of drawing and writing, of writing poems.
Its everything that is bad about school and all that can (sometimes) be good.
It is ‘you’ve never seen Christmas til you’ve seen it in a primary school’.
It is finding our people - and ourselves.
It is feathers moving in the wind,
Matt Goodfellow offers his young readers a very special gift: Wings and words. And, in consequence, some of those readers will grow them and some will write them - and some will do both.
What a wonderful gift it is.
Wings and words.
About pictures too
Fulsome praise is due too to Joe Todd-Stanton’s illustrations. Superficially simple, but really ever so clever, they capture with remarkable transparency the emotions of honest, open Nate as he passes through so much over the course of the narrative. They too hold a moment in freeze-frame and let us see it for what it is. They too just jerk our hearts. It is all in the detail of posture and placement, of an expression so simply but so tellingly conveyed. A football, a book, a hand on a shoulder, a flush on a cheek, can be just as poignant as the lurking beast or an unfurled wing - and that is saying something. This illustrator gets it all. His contribution is huge, and breathtaking.
Notes:
* There is nothing at all wrong with this, just that I see it as something rather different.
** Thankfully, both are published here in the UK, as is another more recent Sharon Creech example, Moo. This is a delightful book too, although it perhaps edges a little closer to narrative verse.