Reading the magic: The Children of Green Knowe - Sue Purkiss

 Have recently been doing a lot of sorting out/chucking out of all kinds of things. (There's something very liberating about it, isn't there? It certainly brings out the ruthless streak in me.)

Part of this was making room on bookshelves. (We buy far too many books, and have historically been far too averse to recycling ones that, in our heart of hearts, we know we'll never read again.) As I was sorting through a shelf full of children's books, I came across this one by Lucy M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe.

Now I know that many of the people reading this are very knowledgeable about children's books, and will be very familiar with this book. But I wasn't. I first heard of it some years ago on one of the Charney retreats that the Scattered Authors used to run, and I guess that's when I bought the book. If I read it then, I had forgotten it - which would be a very strange thing, because I've just sat down and read it and found it literally enchanting.

I'm quite puzzled by my feelings about fantasy in children's books. Some of my favourite books ever are fantasy: Lord of the Rings, Alan Garner's early works, C S Lewis, His Dark Materials, Harry Potter. But I haven't felt the same about recent fantasies I've read, and I'm really not sure why. I've enjoyed them, but I haven't been totally drawn into and mesmerised by that world, in the same way as I was by those I've mentioned. (Harry Potter not quite so much, perhaps.)

But this book - yes. Lucy Boston's Green Knowe is based on the house she lived in herself - not as a child, interestingly: she didn't come across this ancient, magical building till she was middle-aged. The premise of this first book in the series is that Tolly, a seven year old boy in the thirties, has been virtually abandoned by his father: his mother has died, and his father has remarried to an evidently unsympatheic stepmother and gone to live abroad, leaving Tolly at a boarding school, till he is rescued by his great grandmother, Mrs Oldknow, who invites him to stay with her in the holidays. Tolly instantly bonds with her - and quickly senses that the old house is full of magic - and also of the ghosts of children from the past, who become his playmates.

The actual story is pretty much that - there is no quest, no journey, no powerful narrative arc - though there are lots of extraordinary encounters. And yet it is completely gripping. The house and its inhabitants became as real to us as they do to Tolly: it is, literally, enchanting. This is partly to do with the detailed and luscious descriptions of the house - it's clear that Lucy Boston is describing a very real place that she loves, not somewhere that she's made up. Here she describes part of the stables: Here and there a ray of white light came slanting through a broken roof tile, against which you could see the golden motes of dust in the air. It looked mysterious and enticing. And in such a place, would you not expect magical things to happen?

I was so enchanted that I sent off for three more of the books in the series, and also a memoir by Lucy Boston of her early life. What I am very interested to see is whether the books will appeal to my eight year-old grandson, who is a keen and very good reader. Their world is a very long way from his - but it's also a very long way from mine. We'll see.

A Grown-Up's Christmas in Wales by Susie Day

Do you have an obligatory festive read? A book that you read every winter, or that the family share together?

When I was small, my mother would read us the ten daily stories leading to the 25th from Enid Blyton’s  A Christmas Book (since republished, along with other seasonal offerings, as Christmas Stories). I was especially fond of the Yule Log (if disappointed year after year that it was not the chocolate kind), and mistletoe-victim Balder the Beautiful, which gave my small self angsty pangs and a bit of a crush.

More recently, I’ve tried to reread Susan Cooper’s magnificent The Dark Is Rising - a classic I only read after my sister took me to an amazing theatre production when I was a teen - on Christmas Eve, usually leaving it far too late to get past the first few chapters. Then there’s a slight cheat: The Children of Green Knowe is a book I find hard going (despite loving others in the series as a child) but the BBC 1980s adaptation is the annual soundtrack to putting up the tree, wobbly soundtrack and all.

I write for children; it’s not unusual for me to read - and reread - children’s fiction. But my nostalgic urge come December to recreate something - an atmosphere, a feeling - from that time of my small angst-pang self feels like something more akin to homesickness, or its Welsh cousin, hiraeth: a longing for a past place, perhaps one that has never been. I feel it whenever Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas twiddles along and revives my strange kidlike adoration for ‘eyes full of twinkles and smiles,’ and complete obliviousness to the ENTIRE REST OF THE SONG.

I am reminded of my niece who, on her first Christmas of ‘knowing’ (perhaps a year younger than might have been ideal), declared mournfully, ‘It’s not the same.’ I think I want it to be the same.

And of course it’s not the same. Our families grow and shrink and grow around us; the places we call home shift. New traditions come and moss the gaps. Not the same, but good, and ours, and before long beloved.

So this year - when I feel as human beings we’ve all done quite a lot of ‘knowing,’ maybe a bit more than we’d have liked - I think I’ll read something new.


Susie Day - books for kids about families, feelings, friendship and funny stuff
https://susieday.com/
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