THE RIVER AT GREEN KNOWE, by Lucy M. Boston. Reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

Title: THE RIVER AT GREEN KNOWE

Author: Lucy M. Boston

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1959

Although I am a huge fan of low fantasy, the Green Knowe franchise had somehow passed me by. I was aware that the author, Lucy M Boston had won the carnegie medal  in the early sixties and that one of the books had been made into a film.

A few weeks ago I chanced upon a 1980 edition of THE RIVER AT GREEN KNOWE in a charity shop.  A few pages into it I was completely hooked.  It is the best of fantasy, written in a languid, poetic style that weaves a powerful spell on the reader.

The plot is very loose. Two women rent the house at Green Knowe for the summer and invite three children to share it with them: a niece, a vaguely Eastern European boy and a Chinese refugee.  Left to their own devices, the children explore the local river in a canoe, mapping the islands they encounter.

During their explorations, the most magical of which happen by moonlight, the children encounter a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, a giant who is scared of laughter and a flock of winged horses.  On a windy night, they eavesdrop on a Bronze Age initiation ceremony full of dancing, ululating men.

The underlying theme is one of displacement.  Everyone and everything is on a journey – the river, the

people, the boats, the magical creatures.  And the final message – that the greatest journey of all ends with an inevitable loss of faith and imagination is truly resonant.

Ida said, "I'm sorry, Ping. One can't do anything for grownups. They're hopeless."

Ping sighed. "I can't understand, when it's the thing they most want in the world, and it's there before their eyes, why they won't see it."

"They are often like that," said Oskar wisely. "They don't like NOW. If it's really interesting, it has to be THEN."

Hasty research on google tells me that a lot of readers where disappointed when this book was first published. It doesn’t feature the usual cast from the other books.  For me, not being familiar with those other children, this was not a hurdle. I adored the fearless Ida, the philosophical Oskar and the irrascable Ping.  I only wish Lucy M. Boston had written more adventures about them.  I would have gone along for the ride anytime.

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MEMORIES IN A HOUSE by Lucy Boston. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Before you embark on this review, dear Reader, please follow the link below to a piece I wrote in June on the History Girls blog. This will fill you in a little on the background to what I have to say today and also show you something of the house which figures in the book I'm discussing.

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/manor-hemingford-grey-by-adele-geras.html

I bought a book called MEMORIES shortly after visiting the Manor. It's a handsome volume, published by Oldknow Books, an imprint set up by Lucy Boston's family and estate. This contains two memoirs: Perverse and Foolish which speaks of Boston's childhood and youth and Memories of a House which is about the Manor, and the life this most intelligent and interesting of writers lived in it. It speaks of how she restored it, how she made the garden, how the whole fabric of what we see today was put together over years.

The book has an excellent introduction by Jill Paton-Walsh, another highly intelligent and sensitive writer who was a friend of Lucy Boston's. It's good to have the personal view and it adds to what Boston herself has revealed to us. She is a somewhat guarded writer and clearly a modest and unassuming person. For instance, for me and for thousands of visitors to the house, the patchworks which Boston made over the decades are one of the main attractions. These and how she came to create them; how they fitted into the almost constant work of restoration of the house, to say nothing of the writing of the novels, are not mentioned. To anyone who didn't know about them, Lucy Boston's own words would not provide any hint of their beauty and originality.

What strikes a reader is the clear sound of Lucy Boston's shrewd and elegant words. It's quite spooky (and the Manor is the most haunted of houses) how clearly her voice comes through the text, almost as though she were speaking to you. It's like an audio book without the audio. She's fearless, sensible, practical and yet very aware of strange vibes in the atmosphere. Reading between the lines, the villagers of Hemingford Grey were not kind to her during the Second World War. Lucy Boston wore an Austrian dirndl skirt for comfort and ease and this was regarded as most suspicious. Perhaps she was a German spy!

It's hard to pick out favourite things from a book like this. There were many sentences I felt like underlining. For example: Very small cracks in our outer shell of reason let in very cold air. The most moving part of the book is the account Boston gives of many musical evenings she used to host in the Manor at which the young airmen from a nearby station would come and sit on cushions and listen to every sort of record on a huge machine which you can see in my post at the top of this review. I also loved her thoughts about the roses in her garden, because I am mad about roses and she speaks so wonderfully about them. Also, for any children's writers, her account of going to collect the 1961 Carnegie medal (for A Stranger at Green Knowe ) is quite hilarious and quite ferocious in its merciless skewering of those who in those days as often today, put children's books on an altogether lower plane of achievement.

You are not going to find this beautifully-produced book in Waterstone's or WHSmith's. You won't even find it in independent bookshops. You have to write to Diana Boston, Lucy's daughter-in-law, who now lives in the Manor and still shows visitors round herself. The house is well worth a visit but even if you have no intention of doing that, treat yourself to something that will be a joy forever. The ISBN is: 095232332X . It's not expensive. £17.00 won't buy you much that's as lasting and pleasurable as these words. Send a cheque to Diana Boston at The Manor, Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, PE28 9BN. The telephone number is: 01480 - 463134. The website is: http://www.greenknowe.co.uk/

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JOSH by Ivan Southall, reviewed by John Dougherty

Josh was published in 1971, and won that year’s Carnegie medal, but until I came upon a copy in a charity shop I’d never heard of it. And I really should have done - and so should you - because it is a terrific book.

Josh Plowman arrives to stay with his great-aunt in the little town of Ryan Creek - his ancestral home, in a sense, for the Plowman family is long-established and respected there, though Aunt Clara is the only one still resident. 

But the reputation of the Plowmans is to weigh on Josh in more ways than one as he finds himself unexpectedly drawn into conflict with some of the local kids, in particular the bullish Bill O’Connor, his sly brother Rex, Harry Jones, and Harry’s simple yet craftily manipulative sister Laura, all of whom in their own way expect the wrong things of Josh and then go out of their way to achieve those expectations. And then there’s Aunt Clara herself, who has expectations of her own.

Josh is in many ways a coming-of-age story; the story of a fourteen-year old who finds events entirely out of his control and in the hands of others, and who in the end has to assert himself regardless of the consequences. It’s beautifully and individually written, taking a close third-person view which plays with sentence structure to communicate the impressions of Josh’s senses as effectively as his thoughts and actions. And Josh himself feels like a real teenager; although the story is set, apparently, in the 1930s, there’s a real sense of the universal constants of the teen years in his character.

What’s most impressive about it, though, is the way that it draws you in. I have my copy here on my desk, and since re-reading it for this review, I keep finding myself pulled back to it; dipping into it; revisiting episodes as if in search of more. And each time there’s more to be found. 

 John Dougherty

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