This is one peculiar book. Despite the nice picture here of the 1950s Puffin edition, I actually read Persephone's recent re-issue, which I have had lying around for ages and can't now remember why I ordered it. I must have read something very positive on someone's blog, I suppose, and as I do enjoy reading classic children's literature from time to time, I probably thought I'd enjoy it.
Well -- I can't say that I didn't, though I was rather troubled by the flaws in the plot. The central premise is great -- five children, aged between thirteen and seven, find themselves parent-less and homeless, and end up living in a very primitive barn and fending for themselves. This is, of course, what makes the novel so powerful and memorable, for much the same reasons as Robinson Crusoe has continued to attract readers for two hundred years -- you wonder how they will cope, and you wonder how you would cope in the same situation.
These kids, of course, cope remarkably well, mainly because the two oldest, thirteen year old Susan and eleven year old Bob, immediately take on the parental roles. And, since this was written in 1938 and republished in the 50s, those roles are extremely well defined along gender boundaries. Sue is an extraordinarily capable and cheerful girl, who barely complains about the fact that she has to get up earlier than anyone else and light the fire, make the breakfast, get everyone washed and ready for school -- not to mention the fact that she goes to the local farm once at week to do the weekly wash, which means she has to get up at 4am, or that she also has a part-time job doing the accounts for the village baker, who pays her in stale bread. As for Bob, he's extremely handy and can mend things and carry things, and even carve the joint should there be one, which in fact there never is. Because these kids are living well below the poverty line and unless someone gives them a handout their staple food seems to be bread and dripping. Luckily they meet a tramp who teaches them to cook rabbits in clay (their fur and skin come off when you pull the cooked clay off) and the nice schoolteacher shows them how to make a haybox (a sort of primitive slow cooker) into which they can put a stew or some porridge. They fix up the barn very nicely, cleaning it and whitewashing it themselves and installing some basic furniture, but all they have is a cold tap and a cooker but no oven. As for the lavatory -- well, Graham draws a veil over that so goodness knows what they do -- a bucket? a hole in the ground outside? Maybe there's a primitive outside one that Graham is too polite to mention -- I do hope so, anyway.
All this is really fascinating and quite unforgettable, but the whole plot depends on some really shaky foundations. First and foremost, all this happens because of the absence of the parents. Initially this is got over rather perfunctorily quite early on by the illness in some foreign part or other of Mother's mother -- Mother and Daddy immediately decide to fly over there to sort it out, apparently untroubled by leaving the kids despite the fact that they have no idea when they will get back. Then they simply disappear -- their plane is believed to have crashed but nobody has any idea where or why, and nobody takes any trouble to investigate. The children don't know this at first and in fact it's not clear how and when they find out, but they take it so well that it doesn't appear in any way to change the even tenor of their lives. And when they do reappear at the end (sorry, that's a spoiler) their explanation is so extremely dodgy that it strains credibility beyond breaking point, involving a remote mountain village, a mad old man, and double loss of memory. Then there's the move to the barn, engineered because the owner of their rented house wants to sell it (just about credible) and the astonishing fact that nobody in the village seems to be in the least bit inclined to help or even sympathise with these apparent orphans, apart from the nasty District Visitor who wants to split them all up and send them to orphanages or foster homes.
Somehow or other, though, all this doesn't really matter in the end. Because despite all the quibbles and the implausibilities, this is a story of heroism in extreme circumstances and let's face it, that's always going to be a winner. And these kids, though wonderfully capable and admirable in so many ways, are essentially human and make mistakes, have bad moods (not many) and quarrel with each other (not often). Little Alice, the youngest, is interesting because she doesn't cope nearly as well as the rest of them -- too young to really contribute much, she gets bored and cross and miserable and is, in fact, not all that likeable but entirely believable.
Could any kids today survive in similar circumstances? Could kids in the 1930s or the 1950s really have coped this well? These are the questions you'll be asking yourself if you read this book. And presumably it was somebody asking something along these lines that made me want to read it in the first place. And I'm glad I did.
