Illustrations: Tasmin Rosewell
One of our finest
Prolific writer Berlie Doherty has twice won the Carnegie Medal. For forty years she has been contributing outstanding novels to the canon of literature for young readers and, whilst she has never had the mega popularity of a J K Rowling or a Suzanne Collins, her many MG and YA books are distinguished by the highest quality of writing and remarkable thoughtfulness of content. Her overall stature as an author is by far the greater for that.
Her books cover both historical and contemporary settings, often highlighting challenging issues with real sensitivity. A good number of them, including some of her very finest, are evocatively set in the Derbyshire Peak District where she has lived for many years. Her latest mesmerising novel, a masterpiece of its genre, is another such.
Life, landscape and legend
Carl, a boy in his early teens, is brought by his parents to a holiday cottage deep in the Derbyshire wilds in order to try to help him deal with the death of his special friend, Jack. In a highly disturbed emotional state, Carl thinks he is being haunted by the ‘ghost’ of a boy from local legend, the ‘Lost Lad’, together with his dog, Bob. The literal and metaphorical linking of vividly evoked, specific landscape and its legends with real life issues places the novel firmly in the wonderful post-Garner tradition.
In a narrative of masterly construction, Berlie Doherty switches between Carl’s highly charged experiences of the present, and his memories of being with Jack in the past, working gradually towards an ability to face up what happened. Carl’s strained relationship with his highly concerned , but to him intrusive, parents, with a strange girl working at the local farm, with the remote landscape itself and with the supposed ‘ghost’ all contribute significantly to the profound working out of his emotional state. And if the climactic denouement of what happened to Jack is, by the time it arrives, not altogether a surprise to the reader, this does not matter. The intense journey through Carl’s state of mind, his good times with Jack, their petty jealousies as they begin to experiment with girls, and the even more profound concern as Jack is seduced by the perceived charms of a reprobate older boy, is so subjectively shared as to be totally compelling.
Best friends
Strong friendship between two boys in early adolescence, may or may not be gay, but, either way, is a pivotal part of very many boy’s experience. The intense emotional investment, acknowledged or not, can be a formative part of growth and its development can make or break the ability to form committed emotional relationships in the future. Interestingly, this same theme has also been explored in another of this year’s books, Jason Cockroft’s stunning illustrated novel Running With Horses. However, whereas that is a gritty, sometimes even harsh, traversal of this subject matter, Berlie Doherty’s book mines depths in a very different way. It is more gently introspective, but no less intense or one jot less heart-rending for that. Its bleak (but sometimes beautiful) Derbyshire landscape, perfectly reflects the narrative’s troubled inscape. Both Carl and the Derbyshire hills are haunted; haunted in a way that is no less real because it may or may not be imagined.
Fiction for young readers has moved forward strongly in recent times in terms of diversity and inclusion, covering both its authors and its characters. Important themes around the representation of women and girls are, quite rightly, also foregrounded regularly. In both cases, this re-balancing has still a way to go. However it is good here to find an author who understands that boys can have problems with mental health and well-being, in terms of relationships and life’s traumas. The acknowledgement and expression of deep emotion, all too often suppressed and distorted by societal pressures, can be a significant element of this.
Of then, but for now
Although it continues, brilliantly, a strong tradition of fiction for young readers that has developed out of the twentieth century, any thoughts that this might be an old-fashioned or off-trend book are superficial and misplaced. It is a highly relevant traversal of two important contemporary (indeed timeless) issues, adolescent friendship and bereavement,. Boys at a similar age and stage will gain enormous support and encouragement from the open exploration and therefore the legitimising of their emotional experience and its expression. Other readers will gain the understanding through empathy that is the gift of so much fine fiction.
The story of the ‘Lost Lad’ himself, offered as a coda to the main narrative, provides a satisfactory rounding off to the book. His voice, with a strong feeling of bygone rural simplicity, is beautifully caught, and his tale ties the main story back into the location and its past most effectively and indeed affectingly. This is magically carried through into the moving image inside the back cover.
It is a fine thing that many young readers now have the chance to experience a book of this exceptional quality. Hopefully, it will lead them on to seek out other earlier novels from this great writer.
Credit is also due to UCLan Publishing, not only for believing in this outstanding novel, but for gracing its physical production with a quality that reflects the content. This latter is in no little part due to Tamsin Rosewell’s enchanting illustrations, with a front cover painting that catches the tone of the story perfectly, but also has about it delightful echoes of William Blake’s artwork.
