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A Long Way From Verona, Book Review, Children's Book Review, Jane Gardam, Second World War, Teesside
Gardam’s wonderful first novel – I Capture The Castle got a deal darker, and somewhat weirder
Jane Gardam is a most felicitous, and most English writer; one of pleasing quirk, wit, eccentricity and fine observation.
This novel, published in 1971, astonishingly her first novel, with its nearly thirteen year old narrator, Jessica Vye, even more astonishingly won an award twenty years later from the Phoenix Association, as ‘the best children’s book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award’. – my astonishment is with that ‘children’s book’ the level of sophistication, wit, intelligence and nuance in the writing speaks also to a very un child audience. Gardam is a world removed from the film tie-up narrative action obsession which many (of course, not all) YA books seem to be geared to.
Jessica, first person narrator, is the daughter of a schoolmaster who ‘discovered a calling’ and is now a junior vicar. The book is set during the Second World War, in Cleveland, Tees-side. It is a world of great social divides, and she is of course from an impoverished, cultured, deeply moral family.
The novel starts arrestingly, thus :
I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal, having had a violent experience at the age of nine. I will make this clear at once because I have noticed that if things seep out slowly through a book the reader is apt to feel let down or tricked in some way when he eventually gets the point
Now, I must admit, with a quite ‘lost my innocence, twenty-first century head on’ I thought that beginning was going to herald some tale of child molestation or other abuse.
Not so – Jessica, aged 9 has a cataclysmic experience when a poet visits her school, and informs her
JESSICA VYE YOU ARE A WRITER
BEYOND ALL POSSIBLE DOUBT
This is an utterly delicious book. For the first third I was laughing immoderately, and the influence of another wonderfully witty English writer – Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle – was very clear.
But Gardam goes into darker territory – just when you think you have the measure of the book. Jessica is certainly quite an odd child, there is an awkwardness about her, socially. She has something of the misfit about her, and, though nothing is ever spelt out, the reader might imagine that grown up, she might have a great fragility, and, perhaps keeping a tight grasp on sanity might, at times, be a challenge. Not only is she a little strange, something of an outsider, but she is drawn, as a child, to less than conventional adults.

Dorland Long Steelworks, Teesside, 1930s
The intensities of religious faith, as well as the intricacies of class, not to mention the fervour (and humour) of messianic communism feature largely in this book, as good works and visiting the slums happen, all against the background of air-raids and rationing.
In none of this does Gardam (or Jessica) lose her quirk, wit and lightness of touch
This is one of those wonderful books that utterly amuse, utterly enchant, whilst at the same time presenting the reader with the bottomless chasms and impossibly charged heights of rollercoaster early adolescence.
Here is Jessica, crafting a poem whilst worrying about the awfully grown out of dress she is going to have to wear to a house-party which her mother insists she must attend, given by church colleagues of a higher status
‘As merman weeping in a seaweed grove,
As sorrowing dolphin on a silver strand….
I stretch my hands and cry for life and love.’I read this through and was extremely pleased with it. I wrote a few more verses and then went and looked in the wardrobe. The viyella hung like a dead bird. It had little round pale-blue flowers all over it and pale buttons and puff sleeves. I went back to the poem and read it again. It was dreadful
This is certainly one for me to keep on my shelves, and return to at intervals when delight in an easy-read, wonderfully crafted book is needed
As Gardam herself grew up in that part of the world, at that time, and is of course a writer, there is indeed a sense that her own experiences may have been the inspiration for this book
A Long Way from Verona. Amazon UK
A Long Way from Verona. Amazon USA
Lady, I’m packing to move back to Chicago and I just downloaded this book to read during the drive (not when I’m driving, though!)
Ah – I think this was a Roger Brunyate recommendation which probably hooked both of us. I hope your move goes well.
I’m deeply immersed and held fast by Theodore Dreiser’s wonderful Chicago set Sister Carrie
Yes! “Carrie”, an oldie but a goodie. I can put together a list of Chicago books, if you’re interested. Here’s one that I even reviewed!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crossing-California-Adam-Langer/dp/1573222747/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1447272216&sr=8-3&keywords=adam+langer
I enjoyed his Salinger Contract, a year or so ago.
The Chicago set book (another oldie) which seared its way into my memory was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a book which may even be due for a re-read, as it will fit into my still finalising challenge!
I am always amazed, Lady F, at how you find so many great reads by authors I have never heard of! But I am glad you do. This is another one i will most definitely be reading 🙂
It’s one of the real gifts of the Internet, of the whole reader reviewing thing which Amazon initially led, and, even more, the book bloggers. I think there’s access to a huge diversity of tastes and interests, and a little idle glance at reviewers and bloggers whose tastes might touch my own at points, creates a new spiderweb of books and authors, with me as the helpless, captured fly, ingested by a powerful spider book. Except that I emerge and help create a new sticky Web of that book, to entice another fly reader!
Gardam is excellent. I think her best known is God on the Rocks, which was made into I think a TV film or indie film, 20 odd years ago. She’s a less well known writer than she deserves to be, and, perhaps in part that is because she is very particularly set in English time and place. Now that the publishing world is such a commodities trade, the push for the worldwide publication, in a million languages, a film tie in with a blockbuster movie and plenty of opportunities for spin offs with video games, product placement and the like, a beautifully close up view of lives in a small area of the world, quirky, with language full of layers probably only really appreciated by native speakers, is not going to be widely noticed.
Sold! I have been meaning to read Jane Gardam for ages and ages, and you have just pushed her right up my list of reading possibilities,
I’m delighted, Jane. Whilst reading this I had a very strong sense that this would be a Jane Eden Rock sort of book, and you would either have already read and championed it, or would do, in the fullness of time
I love Jane Gardam, glad she’s getting more attention these days for her backlist. She can do funny and tragic like no one else.
Indeed, and excellent way of putting her particular combinations
That looks like a page-turner. So many interesting ideas.
It’s a delightful read, Susan. Underneath the quirk and amusement, there’s a whole lot more going on, and she drops ideas a plenty, softly, in the reader’s path
This book was my introduction to Gardam and remains one of my absolute favourites (alongside Bilgewater and Old Filth).
She’s a treasure!
This sounds wonderful! Your beautifully written review definitely has me sold. How can I have never heard of Jane Gardem?
So many books, so many authors, no one can keep track of them all. I’m sure you’ll find this enchanting!