Despite Australia having such a strong tradition of quality writing for children, comparatively few books by their wonderful authors seem to get onto bookshop shelves here in the UK. Of course best sellers like Garth Nix and John Flanagan are exceptions as is the brilliant Morris Gleitzman. (His Once/Now/Then/After sequence is undoubtedly a very great contribution to children's literature.) It is a delight too when treasures by fine writers such as Sonia Harnet and Karen Foxlee get published here. (See my post on Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy from March '15.) But I do know that there are many other wonderful Antipodean writers of MG and YA fiction of whom we hear far too little little over here.
It is therefore a great pleasure to discover that a real gem like Tasmanian writer Julie Hunt's latest novel is readily available online, even though not directly published in the UK; enough in fact to overcome my usual scruples about circumventing physical bookshops. Song for a Scarlet Runner has been shortlisted for a number of awards in Australia, and this is totally understandable; it is a very original, imaginative and engaging fantasy. Children here, indeed children anywhere, deserve the opportunity to have their reading experience enriched by it.
One of the qualities I value highly in new children's fiction is a degree of originality - providing of course that this is linked with quality - and this book certainly has originality aplenty. It is, refreshingly, not yet another of those fantasies where a child discovers that he/she has special powers and is destined to save the world from unspeakable evil. Far from it. In fact its general tone is something far closer to Fairy Tale, and perhaps even closer to traditional folktales. It treats, at heart, with a young girl, Peat, who is forced from her poor but cozy home to 'seek her fortune' in unfamiliar environments. Deep in the strange marshlands she is apprenticed to a storytelling wise woman. However she is subsequently used as payment for a magical pact with the sinister 'Siltman' and taken by him to an undying but unspeakably bleak alternative world. The principal thrust of the story then revolves around her actions to escape and undo the pact.
Of course this story takes elements from older tales, grounding the telling in its own traditions. However Julie Hunt reimagines everything vividly afresh. The language in which the story is told is not the rather impersonal, event-driven style of actual Fairy Tale, rather everything is conjured up in the writer's, and hence the reader's, mind in evocatively rich detail. Throughout, a sense of place, indeed of many different places, is wonderfully created. Peat's original home, and the humdrum but comfortable life she has there with with her cows; the eerily misty marshlands; the incredible, bustling underground/overground city which is the 'hub' of this imagined world; the central and powerful river; the desolate landscape of the Siltman's 'Ever'; all these are vividly painted fantasyscapes which will linger long with any reader.
This whole created world is peopled, too, with a rich range of memorable characters, brought to life with engaging originality. Central Peat, is both feisty and vulnerable. In many ways she is the classic girl protagonist, and this helps the reader to identify with every moment of her journey through the story. We laugh with her, dream with her, cringe with her, weep with her, almost breathe with her. It is brilliant storytelling. The companions who join her quest, an unpredictable creature she calls the sleek and an ancient boy with a charmingly antiquated way of speaking, are far from conventional though and add both humour and novelty. Whilst the representation of nightmare that is the Siltman is drawn with convincing chill, many of the book's other characters are neither wholly good nor wholly bad and show illuminating humanity.
Of course it is no happenstance that the novel has the feeling of a traditional tale because at its heart this is a story about storytelling, about the power of story itself. This alone would be enough to make the book a very important and powerful read. Like all great children's books, however, it is also about being a child, about growing up, and about learning what life most essentially means. It is both life affirming and life enhancing. This it achieves with affecting understanding, whilst still keeping within the bounds of what is accessible to its intended young readers.
It is rather nice too that Song for a Scarlet Runner does what it does and is what it is within a single volume, without pretention to develop into a trilogy or an even longer sequence. It is a big book in a small space. It is clever and imaginative. It is important in what it has to say about the magic of story and of life. Above all it is hugely entertaining and enjoyable.
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