The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman (1985)

For our December book we turned to a Dickensian story in the form of The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman.

The first of a series, it tells the story of Sally Lockhart - a young woman whose father has just died and who suddenly finds herself caught up in a mystery involving a ruby and the sins of the British Empire.

Sally is as strong and as capable a female central character as you're likely to meet in a children's book.

Go here to read the opening paragraph, and see how skillfully Pullman hooks in his readers...

The first two books of the series were adapted by the BBC, with The Ruby in the Smoke airing back in 2006. Starring Billie Piper, it also featured a young Matt Smith as Jim.

This book was enjoyed by everyone in the group. Some of us re-read it with pleasure, while new readers found it gripping and moved on to the next books in the the series.  Readers compared the books to Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Arthur Conan Doyle, while Isabelle noted the strong reference to Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone.

Although the plot is deliberately melodramatic and Pullman's lingering teacher's habit of informing his readers about hidden truths and injustices sometimes shows through, he is such an excellent storyteller, and his characters so likable (and despicable) that you can't help being swept along by the narrative.

Perfect fireside reading.

October 2012: Joan Aiken's "Midnight is a Place" and our November book

We journeyed back into some unspecified time and location this month when we opened the covers of Joan Aiken's 1974 classic, Midnight is a Place.  With grotesque characters,  a bleak and snowy countryside, a pair of ragged orphans - and a grimy mill town with an extraordinarily high workplace accident rate - it was redolent with parodic echoes of Charles Dickens and Mrs Gaskell at their most melodramatic.  It's reminiscent too of The Secret Garden and Jane Eyre.  While we winced at the author's use of "oop north" dialect to distinguish the workers from the gentry, the Boz-like illustrations by Pat Marriott added to the illusion of being somewhere in Victorian industrial England, most likely beyond the Watford Gap ... 

Born in 1924, Aiken was the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Conrad Aiken and the step-daughter of novelist and poet Martin Armstrong. Home-educated between the wars on a diet of much Victorian literature and early 20th century writing, her heritage is unmistakeable.  This is a quirky book, stuffed with inventive and memorable imagery, and fascinating ideas that appeal to children and adults alike.  

Those who had read Midnight is a Place when they were younger recalled most vividly the scenes in the carpet factory: particularly the enormous press thundering terrifyingly down from the roof to squash any little clot snatcher too slow to get out of the way.  As adults, we were each struck by any number of tiny and imaginative details: Handel's tuning fork, a grandmother living in a Georgian ice-house, loaves of bread baked with chestnut flour, the red coat, a mediaeval jewelled saddle fished out of the sewers, the Friendly Society that's anything but ...

Aiken's beautifully observed young hero, Lucas, sets out the central thesis in his schoolroom essay in the opening pages: "Industry is a good thing because it is better to work in a carpet factory than to be out in the rain with nothing to eat".  He then spends the rest of the book discovering the truth about this middle-class perspective on the lot of the poor.  Thrown together with the fiercely independent young French girl, Anna-Marie, and then abandoned to their own devices, the children are subjected to a series of trials and hardships so monumentally awful, in a winter so cold and dreadful, that you just long for the first sign of spring to bring some relief!  There's surprising tragedy too, including a ghastly and unexpected fight to the death with a piece of industrial equipment.

One interesting theme in Midnight is a Place is that of the role of the music teacher being used as a device to cross the divide between the gentry and the working classes.  We think this may occur in other books too - we just need to confirm this with a few examples.

Finally, the consensus was that (although the story was initially hard to get into) most of us were "gripped without loving it".  Almost too darkly melodramatic - rainswept, snowy, cold and filthy - and with any number of convenient plot twists advancing to a rapid conclusion, Midnight is a Place has just a slight tinge of a Victoria Wood Christmas Special.

Next month we're off to a boys' prep school when we're reviewing Jennings' Little Hut by Anthony Buckeridge (1951).  Supersonic!

December 2011: Susan Coolidge's "What Katy Did" and our next book

We decided it was time to cross the Atlantic and dip into some late 19th century domestic fiction for girls, so this month was all about Katy and What She Did.  Susan Coolidge (Sarah Woolsey, 1835-1905) established herself as an author by writing semi-biographical and charming but morally didactic stories about the six middle-class children of Dr Carr, whose motherless household is managed by stern but well-meaning Aunt Izzie.

Most of us remembered reading What Katy Did (1872) as children and we were delighted to get the chance to read it again with adult eyes.  It proved to be an interesting experience second time around - almost too much for some who were overwhelmed by the sugary story with its moralising underpinnings and had to resort to skim reading.  However, we all pushed on through the rather dull opening pages with their references to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress to rediscover a humorous book with many well-drawn and closely-observed characters and events.

We talked about the frequent appearances of heroic bed-ridden invalids in Victorian children's fiction: Coolidge's Katy and her too-good-to-be-true cousin Helen; Dick in Louisa M Alcott's Little Men (1871); Clara in Johanna Spyri's Heidi (1872); Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1911); Pollyanna in Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna (1911) and Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) being just a few examples.  Several of us recalled bed-ridden Marianne in Catherine Storr's powerful and eerie classic, Marianne Dreams (1964).  We discussed the recurring theme in which an undisciplined and headstrong character - frequently a tomboyish or non-conformist girl - suffers an injury directly as a result of their own disobedience, and learns discipline through long-term suffering and immobility.  Cousin Helen, permanently disabled, tells injured Katy that she must study in God's "School of Pain" to learn lessons in "Patience" and "Making the Best of Things" and so become the "Heart of the House".  See The Treatment of Disability in 19th and Early 20th Century Children's Literature by Ann Dowker of the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford at http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/843/1018

We reviewed too Susan Coolidge's own life and circumstances and talked about the influence of Louisa M Alcott (Little Women etc) on Coolidge's writing direction and style, and the fact that both these authors remained unmarried - resonating with Virginia Woolf's thoughts about the consequences for writers of marriage and domestic duties in her essay "A Room of One's Own" (1929).

What Katy Did and What Katy Did At School are often credited with sparking abiding interest in writing school fiction for girls.  Next month (11 January 2012) we are back on this side of the Atlantic to explore this genre with First Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton (1946).  It's a quick read, so a suggestion for a companion book is Beswitched by Kate Saunders (2010) which combines the story of Flora Fox at a girl's boarding school with magic spells and time travel.