When I was little I lay awake, scared of the dark.
Spooky things were out to get me, and I knew who conjured them up. Witches! But witches weren’t realWhen I was little I lay awake, scared of the dark.
Spooky things were out to get me, and I knew who conjured them up. Witches! But witches weren’t real … my parents had told me so. Yet I could see them in my imagination. How could I conjure something like that out of nothing? If I could see them in my mind’s eye, then they must be real. I lay there petrified, quietly sobbing to myself, lest the witches hear me.
Eventually my mother gently opened the door. “Is it a nightmare?” she asked, and I tried to explain. Somehow it was difficult. “Are witches real?” No. But … and eventually I expressed what I thought she was bound to laugh at.
“Can I make them real just by thinking about it?”
“No”. It was said seriously but said too quickly. Full of worry we talked some more, and then my father came in. A questioning look from my mother. “Shall we ask him?” A pause. “Yes,” I said in a small, scared voice.
To his credit my father did not answer straight away. He thought for a long time and then said “I don’t think so, no.”
“But are you sure?” “Yes, I don’t think you can make something become real just by thinking about it.”
I’m not sure I believed him, but I did get to sleep that night.
Even now it is a powerful feeling, that we can conjure up something terrifyingly evil, immense and unstoppable, just by believing it it. The relationship between superstition and horror is somehow built into all our psyches, popping out nastily when we least expect it.
It’s a great premise for a book, and the Irish author A.M. Shine bought into it with The Creeper.
I was intrigued by the Prologue:
“Fiona knew before hearing the operator’s voice that she was beyond saving. There was nowhere she could hide that it wouldn’t find her.”
Ah yes, I remembered, this is an Irish author, very probably inspired by folklore, history and mythology. The use of “it” stood out; folk horror then, although I knew that the author was known for writing “gothic horror”. His debut novel “The Watchers” in 2021 was critically acclaimed, and has been made into a film. Plus this one, written the next year, had been chosen as a monthly read in a group I’m a member of.
“It’s at the window. It’s smiling at me”
That was enough. I bought it on kindle … and from then on the wretched book went rapidly downhill, so that by the end I was heartily sick of it.
We learn straightaway that Fiona Quinn is (view spoiler)[doomed (hide spoiler)] with the entrance of a detective Eamon Barry, although this is inserted as a general teaser, and the main action in the novel swiftly swerves away.
It’s always a bad sign when we are so conscious of the actual writing. By chapter 4 I was distracted from what was happening by the amateurish writing, and getting fed up with all the similes. Everything seemed to be “like” something else; the author used the word “like” 534 times in this average-length book. Admittedly sometimes this might be use of the verb “to like”, but equally this does not count similes which use “as” or “than”. It really feels as if the author is practising a creative writing exercise. I expect better.
The novel also did not seem to have been very well proofread. There were quite a few typos, for example “too” instead of “two” in “her legs are too different lengths”… and at one point it did not make sense that one person said something when it was clearly said by another. I don’t expect every book I read to become an instant classic, but I do expect at least competent writing.
Yet I remained curious; a sucker for a story. Everything was in place now to tell a good yarn. We are introduced to Ben French, an historian with a knack for charming stories out of the elderly (and who inexplicably works with an outmoded cassette tape recorder! Surely anyone who has ever experienced mangled tapes and jammed heads would agree that there are more reliable methods, especially for recording essential interviews in out of the way places.) Ben has been unable to get a job commensurate with his qualifications since university. He feels as though he is letting everyone down: both his parents and his child (the result of a one-night stand). Then he receives a “project proposal” from an stranger.
Soon after we meet Chloe Coogan, a pert and pretty (of course!) archaeologist at the start of her career. Her field is the archaeology of indigenous communities in the nineteenth century. They have each been handpicked by a mysterious academic, Dr. Alec Spalding, who stresses that they are “perfect candidates” for his task, for which they will be paid handsomely. Greed (and lust, in the case of Ben) seem to succeed over any more cautious and more rational approach to check the credentials of their new employer, which is of course what the elusive Dr. Sparling is banking on. They agree to investigate the existence of a village which he tells them has been isolated from the rest of humanity for 200 years. How could this not be a great story?
One answer to that might be that the title is the creepiest thing about it. Or that it uses every tired trope in the book. Or that the two main characters are flat, gauche and unbelievable. Or … but I should give some examples.
The similes then. I think they first started to annoy me when I read:
“the lumps of stone rose through the weeds like distant dolphins.”
What? I think I can honestly say that I have never mistaken rocks in a desolate landscape for frolicking sea creatures. It did absolutely nothing to heighten the bleak atmosphere the author was trying to create, but just made me laugh! This author is supposed to be concerned with “all things literary and macabre” according to the blurb. I had seen little of either so far.
Not only was The Creeper hopelessly inept at creating atmosphere, but Ben and Chloe’s relationship echoed the worst kind of 1940-50s films. Whenever the action should have been at its most menacing, there was Ben lying alone in the tent they shared, getting distracted by Chloe’s legs and wondering whether to put his trousers on; or thinking to himself “raise your eyes, don’t stare at her breasts ... skimpy clothes” etc. Have we really got no further than this in the 21st century? The tale was always told from this adolescent boy’s point of view. One-dimensional stereotypes ... ah, but Chloe would not have fitted into a 1950s set-up because she swears like a trooper. Presumably this was a crass attempt to prove to us that she was empowered. Oh but wait, she’s small and pretty, so that Ben can show his gallant side by wanting to protect her. What decade are we in here? In fact what century? This is pure pulp. And with the underwear scene, pure farce too. A.M. Shine should perhaps have written a comedy.
When we got on to the villagers, it was just embarrassingly bad. I wanted to throw my kindle across the room.
By now I could see where the “gothic” tag came from. It came from the Victorians who believed that physical disabilities such as blindness or lack of hearing were the direct result of sins of the parents or grandparents. This led to such children being hidden away as sources of shame, and this would continue to adulthood. Anyone differently abled would have virtually no life at all, even if one kind person took pity on their situation and tried to shield them. Well let’s all breathe a sigh of relief then that 2 centuries later, this no longer applies in Western Europe.
But doesn’t it? The people in the village of Tír Mallacht have been isolated, not just for one lifetime but for hundreds of years. We are told the gene pool is restricted, and disease and injury are rife, so that:
“Every countenance carried some feature awry, or ever so slightly askew. Though not overly conspicuous in some cases, such peculiarities were ever present … contorted from labour or defect of birth … there was tiredness and there was sadness, and there was also distrust amidst the ugliness.”
The author stresses the “impoverishment ill health and oddity … filth and gormlessness.”
I probably don’t need to give more examples; the message is clear. Ugly = evil, and such people are to be feared as the source of horror. This is the worst sort of folk horror, peopled by characters and “human monsters” from the absolute golden turkey sci-fi films of the 50s. There is an abundance of “de-” words “deranged, deformed, disturbed, dysfunctional” and so on, appealing to the hive mentality that anyone different from the norm should be ostracised as they are bound to be deranged maniacs. Which they are. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; a trope of the worst kind that any self-respecting author should be ashamed of perpetuating.
It isn’t even consistent. For instance, the author seems to be obsessed with the villagers’ dead eyes:
“Eyes as opaque marbles; lightless and veiled with shadow” … “cloudy eyes” … “dead eyes” … “glassy eyes” …“eyes were lifeless prosthetics.”
Any originality in the descriptions (and there is little enough of it) just misfires completely, such as “making her freckles glow like embers” (that I would like to see!) or “The press of his boots on the earth was like an insect crawling on skin.”. Or how about the laughable “[The] heavy hand of uncertainty was brushed away before it could hold him back.”
But to resume the eye obsession, there seems to be no consistency. We are told of their “herd mentality … they all behaved the same and looked equally as feeble”, yet:
“Some of them wore hoods, with their beady eyes peering out from the shadows like jewels in muddy water.”
And then:
“her eyes were striking, glossy copper laced with reams of golden thread that snared the sunlight.”
Yes, this “poetic” description is of another of the villagers with their cloudy, dead eyes. Or was it beady eyes? By now it is merely confused.
And it gets worse. What about the “Creeper”? Do they exist? It would be a let-down if not. Yet as the novel staggers on to the ending, the inconsistencies are highlighted. (view spoiler)[The villagers have kept a “chosen one”, to routinely torture and operate on so that he is in permanent agony. (This idea briefly reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin's excellent “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”.) Then he is set free to terrify selected victims, and embody the words: (hide spoiler)]
“Three times you see him The first night he’s far far away The next night he’s closer So close that you can see him and he can see you On the third night his big ugly face is at your window The fourth night is your last, because then uh-oh.”
The “uh-oh” completely destroys the words’ power. A shame, as the idea of three is a recurring magical concept, but hitting a wrong note is par for the course with this book.
Even now, there might be a hope of rescuing this sorry tale. (view spoiler)[Ben and Chloe, having discovered the poor tortured body in a shuttered hut, are keen to rescue him - or Chloe is at least (not that this is a sexual stereotyope, of course). We readers are not so sure. Isn’t this the Creeper?
We know that the Creeper is a “deformed and deranged” human. We have been told by the little girl who quotes the chant, and Nu with the striking eyes, that the Creeper “used to be a man”. Ben knows he was a man, and at the end he bargains with him, and sacrifices himself to save his daughter. However, the Creeper has to be a supernatural entity, in order to get across the country to where he is supposed to appear next. How could this tortured body, in permanent agony, who can only attack when physically placed by others in position on top of a victim, a hammer put in his hand and his legs cracked and bent into shape each time so that he can kneel … how can he then be strong enough to kill people? It is ridiculous!
The million dollar question is, if he is a real man in permanent agony, how can he then appear in the right place at the right time? And this is where the cheat comes in. The Creeper isn’t a real man at all, but a supernatural entity, whom nobody would be able to bargain with. Nor would the unbelievably amoral Alec sit there like a lemon while the fire takes hold. He is able-bodied. He's not drugged. Why doesn’t he put it out?
It makes no sense. One way to resolve this could be that the Creeper could have been one of the earlier researchers who had disappeared, but had in actuality been subject to their torture rituals, and was now stuck there. We had learned that the Creeper was the way he was, because he had been tortured into that shape. Or Nu, with the striking eyes and mishapen head, might turn out to be Carole, an earlier researcher who had been tortured. That was a lost opportunity I thought, and might have rescued this book from the “ugly = evil” trope.
And what is the point of leaving a “next generation” child, and a frightened, blackmailed detective, both of whom are inconsequential but nicely placed ready for a possible follow-up novel, if you have killed off the threat? (hide spoiler)]
“The superstition would die and so would its monsters.”
A nice idea, but this story does not work.
There are many more problems with this book, but I have written enough. I do not like to give a newish author such a low rating, but the book has so many faults that I cannot in honesty say “it was OK” (i.e. Goodreads’ two star rating). As mentioned, A.M. Shine’s first novel “The Watchers” was well received and has been filmed. As I read this one, I thought at times that it read like a screenplay, so perhaps this one will be too. Nevertheless I feel it is misconceived and badly written, with too many plot holes. It is irritating.
The author of this book was a champion of India’s big cats, who devoted 50 years to the conservation of tigers and leopards. He was also the first perThe author of this book was a champion of India’s big cats, who devoted 50 years to the conservation of tigers and leopards. He was also the first person who tried to reintroduce tigers and leopards into the wild from captivity.
The author of this book was a member of a princely Sikh family, related to the Maharaja of Kapurthala, and grew up among the great forests of Northern India. He killed his first leopard at the age of 12, his first tiger at 14, and was an insatiable hunter, who shot big game as a matter of course.
So which of these statements is true? The extraordinary thing is that both of them are! The author's father ran a huge estate at Balrampur, some 160 miles North of Lucknow. The family had strong British connections; Billy’s father Jasbir Singh had studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and Kunwar “Billy” Arjan Singh regularly quoted Shakespeare and Wordsworth - as well as Rudyard Kipling. Every Christmas, Billy Arjan Singh, his two brothers and other members of the family would rent a shooting block and camp in the jungle where tigers and leopards were their most prized quarry. Then, one night, having routinely shot a young leopard in the lights of his vehicle, Billy Arjan Singh suddenly felt revulsion for killing, and vowed that from then on he would protect India’s dwindling wild animals rather than hunt them. But to do this, he needed to move away from the farming country where he lived.
Accordingly Billy Arjan Singh headed off across country to the north on his elephant Baghwan Piari, and discovered the perfect spot on the bank of a river, with jungle rising in a solid wall from an escarpment on the far side. It was as far from civilisation as he could go, a full 10 hours’ drive from Delhi, and he decided to settle there. After a while he built a long, low house which he called “Tiger Haven”, and remained there for almost the whole of his life at Dudhwa, on the border of Nepal.
Billy Arjan Singh (1917 – 2010) wrote several books about his life, but Eelie and the Big Cats, first published in 1987, describes a few years from this time. It has an unusual structure, in that it is written as a letter to “Eelie”, reminiscing about her life, and describing what she had taught him. The insights he had from observing the unique relationships Eelie formed are surprising, and important for our knowledge of ethology. With every animal, Eelie formed a bond, and it is clear from the episodes described that each animal responded to the other as an individual, rather than as a member of a species.
Eelie was a most unusual dog: a mongrel who had arrived at his lodge in 1984, when she was only a few months old. She was half starved, and wriggled like an eel, hence her name. Eelie stayed, despite the author’s reluctance to have any sort of “pet”. The two became inseparable companions, and indeed Eelie was no pet but very much her own dog, the small mongrel taking it upon herself to educate the three leopards which Billy Arjan Singh reared at his home.
First came Prince, an orphaned male leopard cub, which he successfully brought up and reintroduced to the wild (now the Dudhwa National Park) in 1973. To provide Prince with a mate he subsequently raised two orphaned female leopards cubs, Harriet and Juliette, twin sisters. He never caged any of his big cats, allowing them the run of the house and its surroundings, wanting to see if their instincts would take them back to the jungle (and thus increase the dwindling big cat population). Prince did exactly that, and Billy Arjan Singh formed an exceptionally close bond with the leopard Juliette, whom he said he loved more than any human.
Harriet returned to the wild and gave birth to cubs. (view spoiler)[ However, in a moment of supreme trust, she subsequently carried them back to the house, in a desperate attempt to escape the monsoon flood. Juliette herself was poisoned by villagers, who had suspected her of man-eating. The culprit was of course a fully grown tiger (hide spoiler)]. It is clear from this that this account is not a a sentimental cosy read, but a fascinating anecdotal account for those who are interested in animal behaviour.
On each occasion Eelie had somehow dominated each of these big cats, not only as youngsters, but also when they were fully grown and several times her size, right until the urge to be fully in the wild hit each of them. On their visits back they would slot into the same relationship with Eelie, as she would with them. They lived on equal terms, and despite their strength and natural instincts, never hurt Eelie. She formed a unique bridge between the world of humans and wild creatures, which has never been seen or recorded before or since.
Her greatest challenge was perhaps Tara. Billy Arjan Singh knew of Joy Adamson and Elsa the lioness. In the late 1950s she and her husband George had reared a litter of 3 orphan cubs from a few days old. Joy Adamson was detemined to return Elsa to the wild, and they taught Elsa to hunt and released her into the Meru game reserve in Kenya. (Elsa was only to live to the age of 5, but that is another story). In July 1976, Billy Arjan Singh acquired a hand-reared female tiger cub from Twycross Zoo in England. By now his reputation as an expert on India’s big cats was established, and also his skill as a naturalist in establishing Dudhwa National Park. He wanted to attempt to reintroduce a tiger born in captivity to the wild, and was given permission to do this by India’s then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. He did so, and she returned to the jungle to produce her cubs by a wild tiger.
The book is written as a letter to Eelie, as mentioned, in nine chapters. It has several groups of photographs at various points of the book; colour snapshots taken by the author. Some show Eelie playing with one of the leopards, or the tiger, on scrubland or in the water, but my favourite one is of Harriet, (leopard) Tara (tiger) and Eelie (mongrel dog), all walking companionably in front of Billy on his daily walk around Tiger Haven.
In 1976, this erstwhile hunter turned conservationist and author was awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s gold medal, their premier award, for his conservation work. It was also largely Billy Arjan Singh who was responsible for persuading Indira Gandhi to transform Dudhwa into a 200-square-mile (520 km) national park. He established the “Tiger Haven Society” in 1992. The Society’s aims include preserving Tiger Haven and sponsoring research into wildlife. He received further wildlife awards in 2004 and 2006. Billy Arjan Singh’s writing style tended to be scientific, and editors sometimes felt this was excessive and needed elucidation for a general audience. However, within his important writings is this shorter book, which demonstrates as well as any, the unique bridge which can be formed between humans and wild creatures. It is a eloquent and moving memoir; a tribute to Eelie, whom the reading public first got to know in “Prince of Cats” (1982) and “Tiger! Tiger!” (1986).
The unloved, unwanted puppy he named Eelie, lived to be 13 years old. To Billy Arjan Singh she was simply “the ultimate dog”....more
The best reference book for classical music, as any musician will tell you, is “Groves”. This encyclopaedic dictionary of music and musicians has goneThe best reference book for classical music, as any musician will tell you, is “Groves”. This encyclopaedic dictionary of music and musicians has gone through several editions since the 19th century. It began as 4 volumes in 1879, had grown into 9 volumes by 1984, during the time I started to use it in libraries and academic institutions, and kept on increasing in length to 20 volumes, when it was renamed as “The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians”. It eventually stopped at 29 volumes. Since many booklovers’ shelves are already groaning under the weight of their personal library, and keeping an annually issued copy of “Groves” up to date represents quite an expense, most people settle for consulting Groves in a library, whilst owning a different work. What they usually turn to is The Oxford Companion to Music.
Some of the same problems pertain, of course. Any art form such as Music is constantly evolving, so that any single book is bound to soon become out of date, with glaring omissions. My copy is from 1970: the 10th edition of the original The Oxford Companion to Music by Percy Scholes, which was first published in 1938, and edited by John Owen Ward. More recent editions are edited by Alison Latham.
The Oxford Companion to Music is one of the most famous music reference works of all time. It is a comprehensive encyclopaedic reference book providing definitions of musical terms, biographies of major and lesser composers, and synopses of opera plots. There are line drawings by Batt, and black and white photographs of portraits of key composers and instruments. It is a little idiosyncratic, as unlike most encyclopaedias (or even wiki!) the style is not scrupulously impartial, but reflects Percy Scholes’s viewpoint. A reader can feel Scholes’s enthusiasm for his subject, and how he wishes to bring it to everyone.
The book is meticulously researched, and covers the evolution of music throughout the ages, with special emphasis on the church. Entries on Jazz and popular music are limited, even bearing in mind that this is a 1970 edition, and the work is extremely culturally biased. However, there are interesting entries on 20th century classical music and composers, as well as oddities such as synaesthesia. You can swing from an article about Sir Michael Tippett or Alexander Scriabin to one on Scots wha hae, tonic sol-fa, or Elizabethan madrigals. One glaring omission is that the article on birds and music totally ignores Messiaen! Perhaps he was not a favourite composer of Percy Scholes, but Messiaen is most definitely the composer most associated with this. Presumably he has been reinstated in the most recent edition. The short summaries of the lives of major composers are not likely to date, although some will fall out of favour, and others emerge as time goes on. I would also expect that later editions do not draw a tactful veil over the fact that many of the Romantic composers died from the long term effects of diseases such as syphylis. Percy Scholes’s book does, but then it is of its time.
The most recent edition of The Oxford Companion to Music was published in 2002. It is over a million words in length, and boasts that it is “the biggest, most authoritative, and most up to date single-volume music reference book available”. It draws on both the classic Oxford Companion to Music by Percy Scholes reviewed here, and the two-volume “New Oxford Companion to Music”, edited by Denis Arnold (1983), but has been brought up to date with entries for the 21st century.
Instead of one personal voice, this new edition edited by Alison Latham has many contributors. There are still comprehensive articles on composers, performers, conductors, individual works, instruments and notation, forms and genres. However the focus is broader.
The subjects covered include a wider field, such as music scholarship and aesthetics, music education, broadcasting and publishing, all aspects of music theory, and performance practice, as well as jazz, popular music, and dance. The book looks at the way music is performed and disseminated, providing comprehensive, accessible coverage of music in all its artistic, historical, cultural, and social dimensions. Entries range from brief definitions to in-depth essays on subjects such as politics, religion, psychology, and computers. It is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible source of information on all aspects of Western music.
There is also an online-only edition of The Oxford Companion to Music from 2011, with over 120 international contributors, and more than 8,000 articles. It has new and updated biographies, with a particular emphasis on contemporary composers; new terms; and improved cross-referencing. Its articles range from clear, concise definitions of musical ideas and terms, to extended surveys of musical forms and styles, covering virtually every musical subject within the Western classic tradition, from the Middle Ages to the present day.
The “Times Educational Supplement” calls The Oxford Companion to Music: “probably the best one-volume music reference book going”, but note the “one volume”. Nothing will ever beat Groves, and obviously that is now online too, and called “Grove Music Online”. In addition to the 29 volumes of “The New Grove”, it incorporates the four-volume “New Grove Dictionary of Opera” (1992), the three-volume “New Grove Dictionary of Jazz”, (2002), “The Grove Dictionary of American Music” and “The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments”. Altogether there are more than 50,000 articles.
“Grove Music Online” is regularly updated, and those who subscribe to it also receive the Oxford Companion to Music. If you want the latest articles, Grove online is your best resource, but for those who would like a one-volume work, I recommend trying the most recent edition of the Oxford Companion to Music you can afford. For many people it remains their first choice for authoritative information on all aspects of music. Revised and updated numerous times since 1938, it used to be invaluable for musicians. Many will feel attached to their copy, but personally, since the advent of the internet, I now feel it is less essential....more
Nearly everybody here must have heard of Black Beauty in some form or other, even if they have never read it. Dramatisations of this 1877 novel aboundNearly everybody here must have heard of Black Beauty in some form or other, even if they have never read it. Dramatisations of this 1877 novel abound, and most know about the famous horse “Black Beauty”, even if the details of her life, and the fate of Ginger, and Merrylegs are a bit vague.
We begin before Black Beauty is named, with her happy and carefree days as a filly on an English farm. Her mother, Duchess, tries to instil good morals and standards of behaviour in the young horse. Black Beauty is sold on to many different owners in her life, and always does her best. Along the way, she has both kind and cruel owners, including a difficult time pulling cabs in London. She tells many tales both of her hardships, and where she was happy with kind owners.
Because of the episodic nature of the book, the story lends itself to dramatising in a weekly serial on children’s television, and this has been done several times. Each short chapter in the book recounts an incident in Black Beauty’s life, but as was common for Victorian “improving” novels, each additionally contains a moral precept, teaching about how to treat horses with kindness, sympathy, and understanding. The behaviour of both horses and humans is well observed and accurate. For instance the descriptions of the different jobs Black Beauty is expected to do, such a carrying heavy loads, or being driven too far, too fast, has a lot of authentic detail of the time. Thus readers gain insight into how horses suffered in Victorian Britain, through their treatment and “use” by human beings. Fortunately Black Beauty ends her life happily, (view spoiler)[ retired in the country, back serendipitously with some of her earliest owners (hide spoiler)], who recognised her by the white star on her forehead.
It is clear that Anna Sewell, who wrote Black Beauty, had a special affinity with horses. She had grown up in a seaside town in Norfolk, and at the age of 14 had a bad fall while walking home from school in the rain, injuring both her ankles. Sadly, because the injury was not treated correctly, Anna Sewell became unable to walk or stand very well as a result. The effects were so severe that she was disabled for the rest of her life.
After the accident Anna Sewell began learning about horses, and spent many hours driving her father to and from the station for his commute to work. Because Anna Sewell herself was dependent on horse-drawn vehicles to get around, she developed a deep respect for horses.
Black Beauty was Anna Sewell’s only novel, and has never been out of print since. It was written as she said, with “a special aim … to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses”, and it has had a lot of influence on how they are treated, which she would have been pleased to see. The book was read worldwide, and her portrayal of the plight of working animals led to a sympathetic concern for improvements in animal welfare. For instance checkreins feature early on in the novel, and it is made clear that they are particularly painful for a horse, and damage a horse’s neck. After the book’s publication, they fell out of favour in Victorian England where they had formerly been fashionable.
Sadly though Anna Sewell was never to know about the long-term positive effects of her novel on the treatment and care of horses. Although she had visited many spas throughout Europe, her health was declining. Black Beauty took her over 6 years to write, as she steadily got weaker. She had to dictate the latter parts to her mother. Anna Sewell then died at 57, 5 months after Black Beauty had been published. Anna Sewell sold the copyright of Black Beauty for £20 (£2000 today). Significantly, although she said it was a book for adults, she sold it to Jarrold publishers. Nowadays Jarrold publish a lot of colourful guides and booklets aimed at tourists, but at the time they specialised in books for children. Perhaps this is one reason why children have traditionally been such a large and loyal proportion of its readership.
The novel remains a classic, and has been quoted as the sixth best seller in the English language, not just in the author’s home country. Two years after the release of the novel, one million copies of Black Beauty were in circulation in the United States, and now it has sold over 50 million copies worldwide in 50 different languages.
Intriguingly for the time, the viewpoint character is a horse. As far as I can tell, this is the first time in English literature where a horse has narrated their own autobiography. Anna Sewell drolly says that Black Beauty is “translated from the original equine”. However just 9 years later in 1886, Leo Tolstoy was to write what he called “a romance of a horse”, called “Strider: The Story of a Horse”. This too was a poignantly profound tale, told from the viewpoint of an old horse. Strider comments on such perennially human concerns as prejudice, fortune, and morality. There are definite similarities between the two books.
But even before Black Beauty - in fact over a century earlier, in 1726 - there were the “Houyhnhnms” in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World”. The Houyhnhnms are rational equine beings and are masters of the land, contrasting strongly with the Yahoos, savage humanoid creatures who are no better than beasts of burden, or livestock. We can see clear parallels here with the intelligence and sensitivity of Black Beauty, as opposed to the cruelty and stupidity of some of the humans she meets and is “owned” by.
In Black Beauty we see the horses’ terrible suffering to enable human vanity. Ginger describes the physical effects of the “bearing rein” to Black Beauty: “it is dreadful … your neck aching until you don’t know how to bear it … it hurt my tongue and my jaw and the blood from my tongue covered the froth that kept flying from my lips”.
Other common practices to do with human’s preferences for how animals should look are described, and not only restricted to horses:
“Now look, for instance, at the way they serve dogs, cutting off their tails to make them look plucky, and shearing up their pretty little ears to a point to make them look sharp … They healed in time, and they forgot the pain, but the nice soft flap, that of course was intended to protect the delicate part of their ears from dust and injury, was gone forever.”
Docking tails, or any non-human surgery for appearance, is happily now illegal in the UK.
One owner is described as believing that “when [a horse] was past work he should be shot and buried.” This practice does still happen with some working animals, for instance illicitly for sheepdogs on sheep farms, or greyhounds which are deemed unfit to race. Perhaps this is not “cruel” as such. But there are charities devoted to rescuing and rehoming such animals nowadays, and many now have more compassionate homes in their old age.
Black Beauty says of another, kinder owner that: “he thought people did not value their animals half enough, nor make friends of them as they ought to do”. This anthropomorphising element stresses the commonality between all living creatures. Horses have emotions, and react just as humans do; they exhibit characteristics such as love and loyalty. However, by telling the story of a horse’s life in the form of an autobiography, and describing the world through the eyes of the horse, we additionally see the horse’s special attributes, in common with other nonhuman species:
“Still, there was an anxious look about her eye, by which I knew that she had some trouble.”
This is not actually anthropomorphising because other animals can do it better than us! We use spoken language instead, and our other ways of communication are thus not very well developed (or humans have lost them over time). For instance, how exactly does your dog know when you are upset, when for people there are no outward signs? Or how do assistance dogs know when an epileptic fit is about to occur, when even the person themselves do not? Dogs have a special gland (the vomeronasal organ) which helps them to identify thousands of different smells, and even isolate a “cancer” smell, as scientific tests have demonstrated. Pets (including horses) adapt to us, and learn our language, far more than we bother learning their signals. They have different ways of interpreting from us, and key into some aspects we are unaware of. This comes through strongly in Black Beauty.
As mentioned, Anna Sewell stated that the novel was intended to be for adults; to inform a wide audience about the all too common cruelty to horses and to encourage prevention of such treatment. However, what seems quite odd is that Black Beauty is now universally seen as a children’s book, and read by thousands of children worldwide. Possibly this is because it is narrated by the main character, Black Beauty.
I have used the female pronoun for Black Beauty. Although the novel does not specify a gender, it is evident that Black Beauty’s behaviour is not that of a stallion; who would be constantly aggressive and distracted by mares. Neither is there any mention of castration, as in Leo Tolstoy’s book. The obvious interpretation therefore is that Black Beauty is a young filly, and later a mare, but the convention in popular literature (and films) about anthropormophised animals is to assume that they are male, even when the acting animals themselves are female! Nevertheless you may prefer to draw a veil over the details, and think of Black Beauty as a gelding.
There is another aspect which Black Beauty shares with “Gulliver’s Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World”. This too is often presented as a children’s book, although it fact it is a heavily satirical work - as is most of Jonathan Swift’s writing. Bearing this in mind, we see a possible subtext to Black Beauty.
As a young filly, Black Beauty’s mother tells her:
“I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.”
Plus we have statements like these:
“do your best wherever it is, and keep up your good name.”
“we are only horses, and don’t know.”
It is drummed into Black Beauty that her duty is to serve humans. That is what she has been taught, and she knows her “station” in life. However, if we think of these things as being said by people rather than horses, and apply it to Victorian society, it takes on another aspect.
Here’s another:
“We horses do not mind hard work as long as we are treated reasonably.”
Now it becomes even clearer. Black Beauty can be read as a sort of moral tract, designed to keep servants in their place. Whether or not Anna Sewell was aware of this aspect herself, or whether it was unconscious, we can see why the book was so popular “below stairs” helping servants to accept the status quo of middle-class Victorian families. The message of Black Beauty is for them to accept their lot - and to be grateful for it! There were a lot of such improving moral tales, encouraging those of the lower orders to reconcile themselves to their position.
Furthermore, there are obvious appeals against slavery. In chapter 5, Anna Sewell alludes directly to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which was published in 1852, 25 years earlier. Just as Harriet Beecher Stowe gives a long polemic condemning the breaking up of negro families in that book, so does Anna Sewell show through Black Beauty’s keen perception, the pain felt by those who are separated from their kin.
So … is Black Beauty just a kiddies’ book? I think not! But perhaps I’ll finish on a whimsical note, as this book does have quite a bit of gentle humour:
“This was a little joke of John’s; he used to say that a regular course of “the Birtwick horseballs” would cure almost any vicious horse; these balls, he said, were made up of patience and gentleness, firmness and petting, one pound of each to be mixed up with half a pint of common sense, and given to the horse every day.”
Humans will always have relationships with horses, but horses are prey animals and therefore easily dominated. I admire Anna Sewell for raising their profile with this book, by whatever means, in order to improve the lives of horses....more
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps o“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves … And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
Have you ever seen literary reviews and thought, they must have read a different book from the one I read? That was my experience with Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I knew nothing about it, but the novel was prefaced by glowing reviews such as:
“A wry, richly melancholic, philosophical mystery. A compelling and endlessly thought provoking novel, luminous with the strangeness of existence.”
Or how about this, from “The Guardian”:
“[It] inhabits a rebellious playful register very much her own. A passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness, for the acceptance of fluidity, mobility, illusoriness”
Or these words, from the LA Review of books:
“This astonishing performance is her glittering bravura entry in the literature of ideas. A select few novels possess the wonder of music, and this is one of them. An international mercurial and always generous book, it can be endlessly revisited.”
This summing up begins well “Strange, mordantly funny, consoling and wise” but continues “[it] fills the reader’s mind with intimations of a unique consciousness.”
What does that even mean? It is tempting to use the author’s own words again, to comment on these literary accolades:
“People who wield a pen can be dangerous … such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.”
Yes, in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the protagonist sometimes grapples with esoteric ideas. There is a fair amount of William Blake in the novel, and many references to astrology, but at no time did I ever feel it descended into pretentious waffle like the reviews. They were included in the ebook before the novel, so it was difficult to ignore them. They nearly put me off before I had begun, but I had it on loan for 3 weeks, so I plunged in.
What I discovered was a delight. There was an embedded mystery to keep me reading, and an intelligent and quirky narrator: Janina Duszejko. (She hates her first name, so I will do as she wishes, and call her “Duszejko”, or Mrs. Duszejko. Strange that. I hate titles, and my surnames have never seemed to belong to me, but then we are all different.) Looking up the name Duszejko—which she repeatedly insists is not pronounced correctly—I learn that it means creativity, flexible, and studious. It fits this character; no wonder she wishes to use it rather than Janina, in Polish: “God is gracious”.
Not that a name is often needed. Duszejko lives near a remote village in the Table Mountains of the Kłodzko Valley, a forested, mountainous region in southwestern Poland, just across the border from the Czech Republic. There are a few houses dotted around among the woods, but those who choose to live here prefer isolation, as she does. So when at the beginning of the novel Duszejko hears a knock on her door, she is startled at the rare occurence. One of her neighbours is dead, she is told.
Duszejko, as I said, is not keen on names. She feels that they do not seem to describe the essence of people, so she secretly gives people her own names: “Oddball”, “Big Foot”, “Dizzy”, “Good News”, and for the deer who also live in the woods—and with whom she feels an intense affinity—her “young ladies”. Her “girls” who to her grief are no longer there, it took me a while to realise, were her (view spoiler)[two dogs, who had disappeared, but clearly been killed. (hide spoiler)]
It is Oddball who tells her the news, and they both go to see what has happened and what, if anything, can be done. Big Foot is dead; with a shard of bone jammed down his throat. Since he is a despicable character who tears up the forest for his own ends, poaches wild game, and treats his pet dog cruelly, Duszejko finds it difficult to feel much regret, but they make him look peaceful as a mark of respect, and she pulls out her moblile phone to call the local police. However:
“Soon after an automated Czech voice responded. That’s what happens here. The signal wanders, with no regard for the national borders … its capricious nature is hard to predict.”
Phone lines seem to randomly reach the Czech Republic when it is the Polish authorities who need to be contacted. Thus begins the metaphor, in which the Czech-Polish border represents Duszejko’s sense of restriction; of being imprisoned. For a great deal of the novel, these individuals living on the edge of society make their own arrangements. There are historic traces all around of labour camps, and the regulations seem rigid and overwhelming at times. Best to be self-sufficient is their watchword; keep yourself to yourself.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is narrated by the ageing, anarchic astrologer Duszejko, who says philosophically:
“For people my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there.”
She spends her time devising her charts, translating Blake’s poetry, trying to make sense of existence, fighting her ailments, and haranguing the local hunters for climbing into their hunting stands, and killing the animals she loves so much.
“In a pulpit Man places himself above other Creatures and grants himself the right to their life and death.”
The antagonism between them is always threatening to bubble over. When one hunter attempts to calm a furious Duszejko, explaining that he and his friends are simply shooting pheasants, she feels:
“a surge of Anger, genuine, not to say Divine Anger … There was a fire burning within me, like a neutron star.”
I never need to identify with any character in a novel, but I felt a close bond with cranky Duszejko, right from the start, and was hit by the parallels between her life and my own. Or is this just a very skilful author? The translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones incidentally, is superb.
Duszejko’s take on life is irresistible:
“The best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.”
“This is a land of neurotic egotists, each of whom, as soon as he finds himself among others, starts to instruct, criticize, offend, and show off his undoubted superiority.”
“Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right?”
However, to talk of the protagonist Duszejko and her views is only the surface layer of this novel, just as describing this book as a whoddunit, although in part true, would be. There are several deaths, and Duszejko increasingly believes with each that the animals are (view spoiler)[taking revenge, that they are the murderers (hide spoiler)]. (This was not really a spoiler, but you might prefer to read it for yourself!) There even seems to be evidence which makes this feasible, since mysteriously (view spoiler)[one victim is found in a well, with deerprints marking the snow all around him, but no other prints (hide spoiler)]. Of course this does not further Duszejko’s reliablity in the eyes of the authorities, who cannot see past their stereotypical ideas of ageing women and of those living in the cottages above the village in self-imposed isolation, as:
“Old eccentrics. Pathetic hippies.”
The village has a macho hunting culture; the killing of a deer is mere sport, an attitude which Duszejko considers despicable.
“Anger always leaves a large void behind it, into which a flood of sorrow pours instantly, and keeps on flowing like a great river, without beginning or end.”
“But the truth is, anyone who feels anger and does not take action merely spreads the infection.”
Duszejko used to be a bridge engineer, and then a teacher, and now? She lives minimally as a recluse, studying astrological charts in order to make sense out of chaos.
“How could we possibly understand it all?”
“ … I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful.”
She is deeply troubled about the world, and also chronically sick, although this is never defined, but is rather merely another thing she is resigned to, with melancholy but no self-pity.
Would it help to summarise the plot? I feel that would only do this novel a disservice. You could read this as a devious mystery, with a satisfying twist, but it is about much more than the story. As the author said:
“just writing a book to know who is the killer is wasting paper and time.”
Using an extract of Blake’s work to begin each chapter, the text is like a series of coded messages where we grasp towards some impression we have of a meaning, but which is essentially undecipherable. I’m not usually at a loss to describe a book, but do feel myself in danger of descending into pretenious twaddle here, so perhaps I was being unfair to those reviewers.
We have 17 chapters where each brief title is followed by a couplet from various of Blake’s writings. Here are the first three; I have added the unnamed sources:
1. Now Pay Attention
“Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death.”
(—The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: The Argument)
In this chapter we get to know our uncompromising protagonist.
2. Testosterone Autism
“A dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State.”
(—Auguries of Innocence)
We begin to see that each character in their separate dwelling is a loner, cocooned by their own beliefs.
“The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.”
None of the inhabitants relates to the others, and they relate variously to the animals around them. The way we treat—or mistreat—animals informs the way we view those fellow humans whom we consider beneath us.
“From nature’s point of view no creatures are useful or not useful. That’s just a foolish distinction applied by people.”
The hunters seem connected with the neighbouring Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, we are becoming aware of Duszejko’s consciousness of both political and gender repression, which she sees as mirroring Blake’s sense of how the different aspects of society are interrelated. Throughout the novel, Duszejko’s intelligence is evident to us, but not a glimmer of it passes others’ preconceived ideas of her; nor does she care.
“That’s what I dislike most of all in people—cold irony. It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything.”
3. Perpetual Light
“Whate’er is born of mortal birth Must be consumed with the earth.”
(—“To Tirzah” from Songs of Innocence and of Experience)
Duszejko is committed to astrology, and gaining an understanding both of the universe and the detail, through drawing her complex and precise charts. She ponders on Perpetual Light, or Existence, or Darkness and the truths she sees in the poetry of William Blake’s esoteric poetry, which she translates with an old friend who used to be her pupil:
“I see everything as if in a dark mirror, as if through smoked glass. I view the world in the same way as others look at the Sun in eclipse. Thus I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like the May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It’s easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence. I interpret everything as abnormal, terrible and threatening. I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?”
Although it was written in 2009, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was not translated into English until 2018, although there had been a film in 2017. I assume that much of the book is unfilmable, and wonder if English readers are missing some nuances. Is the Blake verbatim? It seems to be. Yet there is one episode where Duszejko and her friend are working on translating a passage of Blake.
“How wonderful—to translate from one language to another, and by so doing to bring people closer to one another—what a beautiful idea.”
They exchange various suggestions, where a particular verse is rendered in English which has been translated from the Polish, but which had originally been translated from English. The subtle differences and shades of meaning must have been remarkably difficult to translate back and forth, but it works well.
The author Olga Tokarczuk, an outspoken feminist and intellectual, is a controversial figure in her home country. She has been castigated as a “targowiczanin”: an ancient term for a traitor. After the film came out, one journalist wrote that it was “a deeply anti-Christian film that promoted eco-terrorism”. They seem to have looked through a distorting lens.
To get to the core of his book, perhaps we should simply look at the title, and remember what the visionary William Blake meant by it:
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.”
This is the beginning of Proverbs of Hell, from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. This poem goes on to demonstrate the importance of questioning accepted social ideals, as this is the only manner by which new knowledge can be produced.
Ultimately this is what Janina Duszejko, a unique individual, spends her life doing.
“I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past. In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism—it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components—the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means ‘the dropping of petals.’ The world has dropped its petals.”
“We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?”...more
Cast your mind right back to your early teenage years … so now, what is the first thing that comes to mind about your school?
Did your thoughts go straCast your mind right back to your early teenage years … so now, what is the first thing that comes to mind about your school?
Did your thoughts go straight to your favourite subjects and the things or skills you learned? The teachers? Your best friend? The other kids? Team-mates, friends and school clubs? Day trips and school journeys? The dread of homework and exams? The long trudge through deep snow in Winter to the freezing classrooms where all the seats by the hot water pipes had already been claimed? (Sorry, that one’s mine!)
It’s likely that the other kids featured quite early in your thoughts. Even if you were home-schooled, you probably knew some other kids with whom you were expected to “get on”. Neighbours, relatives, visitors … and there were probably times when it wasn’t easy. Some people have memories of school which are so terrible that they push them aside, only half-remembering, and might feel uncomfortable even reading this. And for just a few, tragically they never get the chance to have bad memories, because life is so hard that suicide seems preferable.
Most of us don’t experience anything nearly so bad. Yet school lasts for so many years, with so many different encounters and situations, that we can all think of one or two which we wish had not happened. I carried my violin to and from school … and was a prime target for jeers and bullying from kids from other schools for a little while, until I was in a classroom where there was a piano, and my classmates “requested” me to play tunes they knew at lunchtimes. I was lucky; I felt included and appreciated. It even took me a while to recall this time. Others might have suffered the ignominy of regularly never being chosen for the team during sports lessons, and having to “be in reserve” or sit on the side. Or that of being a swot, and a “teacher’s pet”. Or perhaps you were one of the bullies, (shsssh!) and now do not like to think of it?
The publisher’s note after Lonely Castle in the Mirror tells us:
“According to a recent UNICEF report, Japanese children were ranked second-to-last in an international survey assessing children’s mental health across thirty-eight developed and emerging countries. While Japanese children were ranked first in physical health and often live in relatively prosperous economic circumstances, instances of bullying in schools, as well as difficult relationships with family members, lead to a lack of psychological well-being.”
In fact I’ve read another Japanese novel with bullying as the theme, Kawakami Mieko’s “Heaven” which was translated into English a little later, in 2021 (although I couldn’t bear to finish it, as it was so intense). Bullying is evidently a huge problem in Japan.
We see the world here through the eyes of a 12 year old girl, Kokoro. Kokoro is a middle school “freshman” at a Junior High school, and is in the 7th grade. The Japanese school system is evidently similar to the US school system, but the book is so clearly written that the unfamilarity of this, just as the precise naunces of honorifics, and unfamiliar national festivals and holidays, are easy to access by anyone like me, from another culture. (I’m English.) Kokoro has become reluctant and frightened to attend school, after getting bullied by her aggressive female peers. Despite her best efforts and feelings of desperation that she will not be believed, any reminder of school gives her a stomachache. Constant anxiety overwhelms her, and she might not even get out of bed. She remains mostly in her room.
We learn of a traumatic experience at school which leads to Kokoro hiding in her house, (view spoiler)[fearing for her life while her bullies shout and thump on the outside door (hide spoiler)]. Kokoro increasingly withdraws into herself, and finds herself unable to communicate with her parents and teachers.
“We’ll fight this,’ her mother said, her voice trembling. ‘It might be a long battle, but let’s fight it. Let’s do it, Kokoro.”
But despite her mother’s gentle encouragement, Kokoro becomes isolated from the world around her, developing agoraphobia. One concerned adult understands and says:
“You’re battling every single day, aren’t you?”
There’s no doubt that the teenage years can be awkward and painful for lonely kids who don’t fit in. This is Goodreads though, so perhaps this thought from Kokora on “fitting in” is more likely:
“She thought if she’d said she liked reading, the others would label her an introvert, so when several girls ahead of her said they liked karaoke, she copied them.”
And this?
“The musty smell that hit your nostrils whenever you ventured into the far corner of a tiny bookstore, the place where few people ever went. A smell she loved.”
You can tell from this that the book is written clearly, and it becomes evident when reading that it is geared towards a YA audience; perhaps 15 - 17 years of age. Having said that, it is the sort of book adults can also read and enjoy, especially if you like a dash of fantasy, or magical realism. The premise is pure fantasy, but most of what happens feels very real. It is character-driven; we engage fully with the characters and are rooting for them throughout.
And they really do all need someone to root for them. For it is not just about Kokoro, but about 6 other lonely young teenagers, all of whom have a problem with school. But a lonely castle? Well perhaps … there certainly is a castle, although we never see its situation. But each child is isolated for sure. And in each case their bedroom mirror is a portal to another world; a world in which to explore the fairytale castle, and meet others perhaps like them, perhaps different, but others who present no challenge and do not question them.
Just as Alice in a famous fantasy classic fell down a rabbit hole and discovered a Wonderland, and Lucy stumbled through a wardrobe and found Narnia, in Lonely Castle in the Mirror seven different children wake up at 9am one morning to find their mirrors glowing. When each of them puts their hand against the glass, they are pulled through to find a huge castle, which is nothing like their homes in Tokyo. In her neighbourhood, Kokoro can see:
“Houses just like the one she lived in; tall condos, apartment buildings that looked, from where she stood, like matchboxes. In the distance, she could catch the lights flickering in the supermarket.”
But the castle is just like the ones she reads about in European books of fairytales; a wondrous magical castle filled with a winding staircase, a huge clock, watchful portraits, and twinkling chandeliers. Each of them also has a private room of their own, filled with what they enjoy doing, as well as communal rooms where some can be together. It is a sanctuary, where they can be by themselves if they wish, or be with the others in a lounge. They can do just as they please; even play video games if they like, as electricity is laid on. Oddly, although it is beautifully furnished, there is no water or plumbing, so any food has to be brought in.
The castle is guarded by a wolf, and a little girl in a mask and an odd frilly costume explains the rules to them. She insists that they call her the “Wolf Queen”, and sets them a task. (view spoiler)[ They have exactly one year to search for the key to the wishing room. Whoever finds it, will be granted a single wish. But as soon as it is found, the castle will disappear, and so will their memories of it. If nobody finds the key, the castle will disappear on March 30th, at the end of the school year, and they will still not remember anything about it, or about each other (hide spoiler)].
Along with Kokoro, we meet the other six children who have been whisked to the castle, and get to know them. All of them have stopped attending school, because of some sort of trauma in their family or among their peers. Hence they are at home, and are able to notice their mirrors glowing. (view spoiler)[ But the mirrors only start to glow at 9am – the start of the school day - and it becomes evident that the castle is only open during school hours. During this time they are free to come and go as they please, but they must leave sharp by 5pm, or the wolf will eat them. On occasion they can hear the wolf howling when the exit time draws near (hide spoiler)].
The story is told from Kokoro’s point of view, and as her visits become more frequent, Kokoro gets to know the others: Fūka, Aki, Masamune, Ureshino, Rion, and Subaru. They are all very different, of slightly different ages, and from different family backgrounds. It soon becomes apparent to Kokoro, that each of the other children has had a similar experience, but all appear reluctant to divulge their story. There is a tacit agreement that nobody questions the others about what happened to make them avoid going to school. But we do gradually get to know snippets of their family circumstances, or how and when they were bullied. Poignantly we see that the children feel guilty for dropping out of school and missing classes, and worry that they are letting down their parents. The character affected always claims that it was not bullying, which is typical behaviour for many victims. We are even introduced to an alternative school for children who have dropped out of mainstream school. This apparently parallels the free schools which emerged in Japan in the 1980s, as a response to increasing truancy.
What is unique about the castle is that unlike other fantasy worlds, it is a safe haven for the young people, offering respite from the traumas of the outside world. They are being given physical space, every school day for a whole year, to enter the castle as they please, explore at their leisure, develop friendships, make connections, and slowly work through their trauma. I did feel Kokora’s real life became a little repetitive (although I’m not likely to forget what “bento” is now!) and would have preferred more of a fantasy feel. I was always keen to go back through the mirror!
However, the time allowed is always a threat hanging over everything.
“All we’ll have left are these memories. We won’t be able to help each other.”
and this lends a sense of urgency to the novel. There are also some dark themes underlying many of the stories, some tragedy, and we have a real sense of fear towards the bitter-sweet end.
Throughout, we see how the seven youngsters form connections, resolve difficulties, learn to communicate with each other, and navigate the nuances and complexities of friendship. There are shy exchanges of gifts and unreciprocated confessions of love; there is a little jealousy and fights, just as in any teenage group, with no adults there to mediate or interfere. It is only outside the castle, beyond the mirror and in the real world, that we observe the difficulties these characters truly have, navigating not only their peers but also their parents, other adults, and the limitations and rules of the school system. There are small acts of rebellion, (view spoiler)[such as one dying his hair, or another dressing older and having a much older boyfriend (hide spoiler)]. And it is by going through the portal of the glowing mirror in the castle which enables them to have autonomy, and the freedom to develop friendship skills and live as they please, and confront their anxieties and fears in their own way.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror is an absorbing story, which will appeal to lovers of magical realism. It is a clever way for the author Mizuki Tsujimura to explore important social and personal issues; themes of emotional wellbeing and friendship lie at the heart of the novel. We read seven very diverse accounts of isolation, through believable engaging characters. Yet within the fantasy framework, it is internally consistent, with problems which feel very real.
The set-up poses several questions. We can pick up clues, which are carefully dropped so that we can piece together some of the jigsaw, but not the whole. I have not revealed any of these under the spoilers; those are there merely because many people do not like to know too much about the plot. The tension builds gradually, and we pick up various hints of what is to come. The ending is satisfying, and although I had worked out part of what was happening, at least two aspects of the ending were a complete surprise to me.
I felt the pacing was good, and my keen interest in what would happen to each child, what the castle actually was, and the reason for its existence kept my attention focused. I liked this book very much, and will miss Kokoro, Fūka, Aki, Masamune, Ureshino, Rion, and Subaru, whom I feel I have got to know. The story has heart, sensitivity, and an original (and almost unguessable) ending which derives from what has gone before, rather than being deux et machina. Despite everything, the tone remains optimistic and hopeful.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror (かがみの孤城) by Mizuki Tsujimura (辻村深月) was originally published in 2017, and became very popular. A manga adaptation was then serialised in 5 volumes between June 2019 to February 2022, and an anime film adaptation was released in Japan on December 23, 2022. It was translated into English by Philip Gabriela, who has also translated Haruki Murakami. “The Guardian” newpaper has called it “Strange and beautiful”.
As I read the book, it did occur to me that it would transfer well to manga or film, but I have strong mental images of the characters now, and prefer to stay with them.
“A hypothetical reality seemed preferable to present reality, and the more she fantasized about how great it would if certain things could come true, the more reality that world seemed to take on.”...more
Bionic Jean
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