Christopher Uptake by Susan Price

Reviewed by Cecilia Busby

Available on Kindle

"Christopher Uptake" is a curious book. I have an original copy of it, illustrated with a picture of a rather serious young Elizabethan man, bending over some writing in a dark room, illuminated only by a candle. The newly issued Kindle cover has an immediately recognisable portrait of an altogether more confident character, gazing at the viewer with a hint of challenge in his eyes.

The motto on the original portrait (below) is "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - that which nourishes me also destroys me. In Elizabethan times the motto was associated with a torch or candle held upside down - the falling wax causing the candle to burn more brilliantly but also eventually extinguishing the flame. The image reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night; But ah my friends and oh my foes - it gives a lovely light!" The lovely light, was, of course, the short but brilliant career of Christopher Marlowe, poet, dramatist, atheist and spy, whose wild living and controversial opinions may have led to his murder at the age of 29.

Christopher Uptake is clearly based on Marlowe - yet strangely that link is not made in the blurb for either the original or the re-issued book, despite the portrait on the front. Nor do any of the Amazon reviews mention it. It seems odd. Uptake, like Marlowe, is the son of a tradesman, a grammar-school boy who wins a scholarship to Cambridge, an atheist who takes to writing plays, and who gets mixed up in the Elizabethan secret service, spying on the equivalent of Second World War fifth columnists: the English Catholics. Yet Uptake is not Marlowe; his trajectory is, finally, very different. Rather than taking to the business of spying with gusto, Uptake is riven with doubts. He suffers from stabs of conscience and from guilt at the thought of what his spying may lead to for the Catholics taken and tortured by the Elizabethan secret police. Uptake is a reluctant spy, caught in a net where his cooperation is ensured by threats to himself and his family. He is represented as a miserable collaborator with a harshly repressive state regime.

It's a long way from the swashbuckling image of Marlowe the dramatist, with the "high astounding terms" of his bravura verse, his reputed love of "tobacco and boys", and the boast that "he had as good a right to coin as the Queen of England and ... meant through help of a cunning stamp-maker to coin French crowns, pistolets and English shillings". I have to confess to having fallen half in love with this version of Marlowe when I was sixteen and first discovered Tamberlaine the Great. In the preface to my secondhand copy of his Collected Works was a reproduction of the infamous Baines Note, detailing Marlowe's supposed blasphemies. That, for example, "all Protestants are hypocritical asses", and "if he were put to write a new religion he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method" as "all the New Testament if filthily written". Like the later Marx, he argued that "the beginnings of religion was only to keep men in awe", and that "Moses was a juggler". Doubts have been cast on how much of this was really Marlowe's opinions and how much was malicious slander - but I was hooked: by the poetry, the drama, and the blasphemies.

Reading "Christopher Uptake", I wondered whether Susan Price had set out to write about Marlowe and then found that she couldn't make it work. Simply couldn't find a way "in" to a character who was so obviously intelligent and free-thinking and yet came to work as a spy for the government, betrayed those he had feigned friendship with, professed a Catholic faith only to entrap and incriminate others. Perhaps she just couldn't prevent the guilt and the doubt overwhelming her Christopher, unlike the historical one, to the point where he had to become Uptake rather than Marlowe.  It seems curious, otherwise, to stick so closely to the original and yet give her character's story such a different resolution. Certainly the book made me think much more deeply than I have before about what it would have been like to live in the time of Elizabeth I, what it really meant to be surrounded by such a strong network of spies and agents provocateurs, to live in the middle of rumour, plots, counterplots, agents and double-agents. It would have been, I think, a little like living in Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Uptake is a young man who wants to be left alone, doesn't want to do anyone any harm; yet in such times it's hard to stay neutral, and Christopher struggles in the sticky webs laid by the Queen's spymasters.

I was really gripped by Christopher's predicament, by his moral dilemmas and justifications, as well as his attempts to limit the damage he has done. Price does an excellent job of making his world believable, making us care about Christopher, making us desperate for him to escape the clutches of the sinister spy, Bagthorpe. It's a book that lives on in the imagination after it's read, and it certainly made me think again about the real Christopher Marlowe and what he may or may not have done in the service of the unscrupulous Sir Francis Walsingham (pictured).

I think there are ways to understand Marlowe's role as a spy, particularly when you remember that England at the time was a small and insecure island, surrounded by great Catholic powers simply waiting for a chance to invade. It was a crueller time, life was more fragile and more contingent. But Susan Price's Christopher is a fine creation that certainly serves as a challenge to anyone who admires the playwright: what made Marlowe choose differently from Uptake?


Cecilia Busby writes as C.J. Busby
She is the author of Frogspell, Cauldron Spells, Ice Spell and Swordspell
www.frogspell.co.uk

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A World Between Us by Lydia Syson. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

Among other inspiring stories of left-wing solidarity, my father used to tell me about the Battle of Cable Street, when Mosley tried to march his Blackshirts through London's East End, and the people who lived there stood shoulder to shoulder and decided "they shall not pass".  So when I heard that Lydia Syson's novel begins with that confrontation I immediately wanted to read it - and I was not disappointed.  It's a lovely, satisfying story, both romantic and realistic.

Trainee nurse Felix (Felicity) gets caught up by chance in the Cable Street turmoil, and encounters Nat, a young Jewish man who has just signed up to join the International Brigade and go off to fight in the Spanish Civil War.  In the course of a few brief meetings they fall in love, their emotions heightened by imminent parting and the prospect of war.

Nat is a working-class boy, Felix a middle-class girl with a stuffy brother and safe background and a nice but seemingly dull would-be suitor, George.  Her life seems predictable, and she makes a dramatic move to escape it: she volunteers as a nurse and follows Nat to Spain.  George goes after her in hopes of bringing her home to her family - but he too is changed by events and ends up joining the International Brigade.  These are idealistic young people who see clearly how the plight of the Spanish people is connected to wider struggles for freedom and democracy.

Lydia Syson creates a moving and detailed picture of the privations endured by the medical staff in Spain, the suffering of the wounded, the horror of battle, the despair, and the wrongs committed by both sides.  In particular she conveys well the chronic exhaustion and the moments of snatched joy.  Her main characters are engaging, and all three are faced with difficult choices which keep the reader involved.

The Spanish Civil War is a period of history that few people now seem to know about, and this story is the perfect way to learn more.  And although the story was written for teenagers, I think adults would enjoy it just as much.

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The Fate in the Box, by Michelle Lovric: reviewed by Sue Purkiss

The D’Agos’ house was surrounded by the homes and workshops of Venice’s cloth-dyers, whose sheets of crimson, emerald and saffron-coloured fabric hung like glorious mediaeval pennants from the rooftops and windows. Although the sun had barely risen, it was warm in the workroom. The pungent smells from the dyers’ vats were stealing through the air, along with the sleepy voices of the girl orphans warbling their morning hymns at the grand almshouse of the Mendicanti.

This is a fairly random extract from Michelle Lovric’s new children’s book, The Fate in the Box; I could choose a couple of sentences from almost anywhere, and in the same way, they would reflect the delight in a place (Venice) and the delight in language which are hallmarks of Michelle’s work. You can see, so clearly, the vivid colours of the lengths of fabric; you can feel the warmth in the workroom, smell the dyes, hear the voices of the orphans – and just in that passing reference, you are given a sense of the kind of life those girls are leading, in the strict regime of the cloister. In just the same way as this short extract, the book is full of rich detail and exuberantly imagined places and people. It’s not just the circumstantial detail either; the characters are all utterly individual, each with their own, very special voice, and the story twists and leaps and dives like one of the mermaids who helps to protect the city.

Michelle has already written three other book for children set in this alternative Venice. She’s going backward in time: this one precedes the other three. Some of the characters are familiar – those mermaids, for instance, beautiful and graceful but also greedy and earthy, with a ripe turn of phrase learned from pirates. Some of the family names are recognisable from earlier books too, and so is the general set-up: Venice is in thrall to a selfish and brutal dictator, in this case Fogfinger, and only a small group of children – with the help of cats and various other creatures – can defeat him and save the city.

The Fate in the Box is not for the faint-hearted; in the very first chapter, it seems that Amneris is to be sacrificed at the whim of Fogfinger; she is forced to climb a tall tower, where the Fate in the Box will decide whether she will walk back down again or whether the trapdoor beneath her feet will open, catapulting her into the deep lagoon hundreds of feet below where a terrible sea monster is said to lurk. There are far more edge-of-the-seat moments to follow. But the way the story is told is so affirmative that, even as you seriously consider taking shelter behind the sofa, you know that ultimately good – and the children – will triumph.

I’d recommend this to boys and girls who enjoy adventure, humour, fantasy, and a good story phenomenally well told. It's published by Orion.

Incidentally, over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, Michelle has written a post about the window displays she has put together about The Fate in the Box - it's here, and it's fascinating.

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TWO NESTS, by Laurence Anholt and Jim Coplestone - reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title: TWO NESTS
Author: Laurence Anholt
Illustrator Jim Coplestone
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Pub date: 7 March 2013
ISBN:

Family separation is always a traumatic issue for kids and we can never have enough books that deal with the subject in a sensitive and positive way.

Laurence Arnholt's latest collaboration with illustrator Jim Coplestone is one of the best, and funniest, I have seen dealing with this subject. Told in bouncy, fast-flowing rhyme, it's the story of Betty and Paul, two birds who fall in love and build a nest together in a cherry tree.   Betty lays an egg and they have a baby. The happy occasion leads to a respectful status in the local animal community as well as a delightful social life with lots of creatures from the surrounding countryside coming to visit.  But the nest proves too small for all three birds and before long they start squabbling.  Paul decides to move out and set up home on another branch of the cherry tree.

This turn of events leaves all three members of the family sad, especially Baby Bird who misses his/her dad [the baby's gender is never revealed]. Betty assures him/her that both parents still love their little baby very much and - before long - Baby Bird has sprouted wings and discovered the advantages of having two homes to share.

This book not only deals with an important issue in an understanding and perceptive way, it's also a jolly good read. The gentle illustrations, suffused with light blues and pinks, give it a cosy, whimsical look.  The toddler I tired it out on was shouting 'again' before we'd come to the last spread and I'm sure lots of other kids will be doing the same everywhere this book is read.

Saviour Pirotta
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The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan review by Lynda Waterhouse

Ever since I read Vikram Seth’s ‘Golden Gate’ and Ellen Hopkins’s ‘Crank’ I have enjoyed reading novels in verse. Part of my YA novel, ‘Cut Off’ was written in blank verse .This poetic medium is ideal for the expressing Kasienka’s emotional turmoil. Sarah says ‘each word in a poem holds so much power.’

The book is beautifully packaged with a striking cover designed by Oliver Jeffers and has a quote from Cathy Cassidy on the cover which is guaranteed to draw the eye of the early teen reader for whom this novel would be perfect.

 It tells the story of Kasienka and her mother who leave their home in Poland and head for England in search of their father. He has abandoned them and Mama is desperate to find him. They are forced to live in a studio flat

There are a lot of feelings packed into the taut verse. Kasienka has to settle in a new school and find her place amongst the mean girls and their petty unwritten rules. She finds herself falling for William. She has deal with her conflicted feelings about her father and his new life in Coventry alongside managing her mother’s pain. Her talent for swimming literally pulls her through,

At the pool’s edge I might be ugly,

But when I speak strokes

I am beautiful.

 Despite its title I found that it did skim the surface of some characters and situations which was a little frustrating but there is so much to admire in this debut novel. It has already been short listed for The CILIP Carnegie Medal and The CLPE Poetry Award.

The Weight of Water is published by Bloomsbury

ISBN 978-1-4088-3023-9

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THE BATTLES OF BEN KINGDOM: THE CLAWS OF EVIL by Andrew Beasley, reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

It's 1891 and, behind the exclusive doors of London's Sinistra Club, evil is gathering its forces. The Council of Seven, rulers of a shadowy society known as the Legion whose hand stretches back over two thousand years, are readying themselves for action and control of the city of London is their goal.

Standing in their way are the Watchers. Living on the city's rooftops, their vigilance has protected London for thousands of years. They believe in an ancient prophecy which predicts a saviour will help them finally defeat the Legion.

When a vital ingredient of the Legion's plan falls into the hands of a cocky street urchin named Ben Kingdom, he finds himself thrust into the midst of a deadly battle and struggles to know who to trust. Ultimately, he has to chose a side - good or evil - and it's by no means certain which way he will decide to go.

This accomplished debut novel, aimed at readers aged 9+ , is jam packed with danger and excitement. The story races along at breakneck speed, introducing and dispensing with a brilliant array of well-drawn characters as it goes. I loved the ambivalence of Ben - his brash exterior conceals an uncertain naivety which I found very appealing. I also liked Lucy Lambert, whose thankless task it is to watch over Ben and try to keep him out of trouble. But really, it's hard to pick out one or two characters because they are all intriguing, even the sickeningly evil ones.

I especially adored the design and feel of this book. The cover in particular encapsulates the Heaven v Hell theme of the story, with Ben caught between the two and leaves a potential reader in no doubt about what they are getting; an urban steampunk fantasy. Inside, there's a map showing Victorian London, with key locations picked out in greater detail and I must admit, I am a sucker for a beautifully designed map. The action is split over five days and each section (comprising a day) has a gorgeous line illustration to accompany it, giving a rich feel for the fantastical characters and creatures of the book.

I can't wait to discover what battles Ben Kingdom faces next. Bring on the second adventure!

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The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos: reviewed by Gillian Philip

I have been a sucker for space adventure ever since Star Wars caught me at an impressionable age. (I mean the first three. Let us never speak of the prequels.*) How we marvelled at the groundbreaking special effects of 1977. Some of them look a teeny bit ropey now (really, they’ve held up remarkably well), but the movies endure, because, well - it wasn’t about the special effects. Not entirely, anyway. The first Star Wars, an unexpected hit, was a mash-up of westerns, Robin Hood and Saturday morning serials. The story was the thing, and the thrills and the adventure and the romance and the cliffhangers...

Which is where Dan Krokos comes in. The Planet Thieves is the first in a middle grade series following the adventures of Mason Stark, his bitter frenemy Tom Renner and the violet-haired, eerily beautiful but mysterious Merrin Solace. I liked that Mason from the get-go: when we first meet him, hiding behind the pilot console of the SS Egypt, he’s just played a prank on his sister, a Lieutenant Commander of the fleet, by removing all the bolts from her chair. Well, he’s bored; he’s only a thirteen-year-old cadet logging space time, and he and the other cadets have done nothing but kick their heels, squabble and get in the way of the crew. (I couldn’t help picturing a much younger James T Kirk from the rebooted Star Trek movies.) 

Anyway, he knows how to pick his moments, does Mason. Earth is at war with the Tremist (a war sparked ‘because two races were really bad at taking care of what they had’) and the SS Egypt comes under enemy attack just as Mason’s removing the last bolt. 

See, that’s what I like in a book. Straight in at the deep and dangerous end, and then let’s see how much worse it can get.

Of course, it’s the irritating ‘cargo’ of cadets who escape notice and capture when the crew and senior officers are overwhelmed, and it’s down to them to save the day. There follows a properly action-packed thrill-ride, full of swashbuckles and narrow escapes, but it’s not all smash-bang-wallop; with Mason, Tom, Merrin and their fellow cadets forced into the role of heroes, all their faults and foibles are exposed. They all have histories and they all have secrets. and things are going to get hairy on the personal as well as the combat front. And the stakes are higher even than they thought, because the Egypt turns out to be carrying a weapon that could change the course of the war...

I mentioned movies because that’s how the book feels in your head. It’s kinetic and very visual, and any kid who loves science fiction or superheroes is going to adore it. Mason and his friends are heroes to root for, and the Tremist are magnificent villains, sinister but complex - not least because despite 60 years of war, nobody knows what they are. 

Oh, and the special effects are fabulous.

The Planet Thieves is published on May 21st in the States; this side of the Atlantic it’s currently available only as an audiobook, but keep your goggles peeled because I’m certain it’ll cross over here at warp speed - not least because there is word of an ACTUAL Warner Brothers movie.  

The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos; published 21st May by Starscape Books

www.gillianphilip.com

*PS Nor shall we ever speak of the Ewoks. 

Dan Krokos has a bit of a Matt Smith look going on, doesn't he?
This had no bearing on my review but I thought I'd mention it.

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