Catherine Storr, the author, conveys Marianne’s pain very effectively, and we really feel for this small girl, cooped up indoors with bright summer weather streaming in her windows. Her birthday dinner is thrown away uneaten, and the celebrations stop.Ĭonfined to bed for weeks on end, unable to even cross the room to pick up a book to read, she grows more and more irritable and frustrated. Her temperature spikes, her appetite disappears, and her worried mother summons the doctor. Straight away, we are introduced to Marianne, who starts to feel really unwell on her long-awaited tenth birthday. I am so glad I found it again, and that I can put it up with my other favourites, the books which shaped the person I am today. Reading it as an adult does let me see it in a different light, of course, one which points up all the things that could now be seen as faults and flaws – the gaps in the story, the fact that all the characters sound the same, the repetition, the telling and showing and then telling a bit more – but the best thing about finding it again is this: I can still understand, very clearly, why this book stuck with me for the best part of thirty years. The terror it inspired in my eight-year-old self will never leave, and that, of course, is a brilliant thing. I still love it as much as I ever did, because the feeling it gave me as a child is still there, crackling away at the base of my skull. That’s not to say it isn’t a fabulous book – because it is, absolutely. After that, it was only another couple of hours before I had it digested.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |