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The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman

The Broken Bridge by Philip Pullman is one his less well known books, but will both entertain and stretch the older children in our age group.

Ginny is a mixed race teenager with a talent for art she inherited from her dead mother. Growing up in Wales with her father, she has worshipped her mother: loving French because her Haitian mother spoke it, and feeling close to her mother when she was creative. Her realtionship with her father has alway been close, despite a series of breakfast ladies (women who were there in the morning for breakfast, obviously her father's girlfriends). She loves the landscape which she feels she owns. The summer she is 16 feels wonderful: she has her art which she believes is her future, she has a close friend, she has two part-time jobs she loves, and the area's only other ethnic minority, her enchanting friend Andy, is back home looking handsomer than ever.

This is not a conventional teen romance, nor a conventional coming of age story. From the start something ominous is hanging over Ginny's idyll and she gradually realises nothing about her family is what it seems.

So often, much though I love Pullman's books, you feel an axe to grind behind the stories, the anti-Narnia of His Dark Materials, the critique of Victorian values and social conservatism of the wonderful Sally Lockhart books. Here though the dominant feeling eminating from the implied author is not the irritation and anger of the more famous books but love: love of landscape, of the potential of youth, of real families, of art.

What I particularly like for our age group is the sections on art. I love the way Ginny thinks about her talent and her work. I like the way we see the embryonic artist's point of view. There are also some wonderful discussions of art amongst the characters.

Just as many children are no longer taken to the theatre, not even to pantomines, many children never go to art galleries, never stand in front of an impressive canvas and have someone explain it or ask them what they think. In this, as well as in the quality of writing, The Broken Bridge demands to be on any reading list for 13 or 14 year olds. Slightly younger children may get something out of it if they are particularly emotionally mature.

Watch points:

Any peril is emotional and there is not really any violence though there are angry scenes including some mild domestic violence.

Death: the consequences of death are dealt with.

Relationships: relationships are the crux of this book. There are family relationships of all kinds as well as friends and boyfriends though it is not a romance. There are no explict scenes but a knowledge of the facts of life is assumed throughout. Homosexuality is referred to a few times.

Anything else: there are a few swear words: pissed, for example. There is lots on the nature of marriages, why relationships break down or twist into something unacceptable, on parents and children, on parental abandonment, on adoption and fostering, and on truth and lies in families. There is also much about love and forgiveness and moving on. There is something on identity as it pertains to race but this is not the central thrust of Ginny's emotional difficulties. There are some fantasy voodoo moments.

Overall: The Broken Bridge is a wonderful uplifting story, tightly plotted and exciting, with a wonderful central character. It is a coming of age story but is not the slightest bit sentimental, being intense but never truly dark. The way art and landscape are made part of the novel is unusual and very enjoyable.

Availability: it appears to be out of print but lots of inexpensive used copies appear to be available.

Other reviews and useful sites:

Philip Pullman's page on this novel is here.

There is a review on Kirkus here and on Publisher's Weekly here.

The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence

The Case of the Deadly Desperados is the first of the PK Pinkerton mysteries by Caroline Lawrence, best known for the Roman Mysteries.

My name is PK Pinkerton and before this day is over I will be dead.

From the very first we're involved in the thick of it with PK Pinkerton in the Wild West of the nineteeenth-century. The foster parents of Pinky are dead, scalped and apparently killed by Indians. Pinky, however, is no ordinary 12 year old, having skills in hunting and tracking, and it becomes evident that three men hunting for Pinky are responsible for killing Pinky's foster parents. Pinky's skills are great but Pinky also has a "thorn":

But here is my Problem: I cannot tell if a person's smile is genuine or false. I can only spot three emotions: happiness, fear and anger. And sometimes I even mix those up.

Pinky seems to have problems somewhere on the Asperberger's / Autism spectrum. Pinky's talents and hinderences coincide to make this a truly exciting book. Pinky can get out of tight corners with talents you wouldn't suspect, and yet is easily trapped when those of us with more conventional personalities can see the problem coming. This makes for a plot that is both character led (my favourite sort) and unpredictable.

Running from the deperados Pinky sets off for the "Satan's playground" and "vilest place on earth" Virginia City where Pinky immediately meets a "Soiled Dove" (the slang in this book is great - very evocative) and the adventures truly begin, as Pinky dodges the deperados and tries to protect the document that everyone seems to be after. Pinky has no idea who to trust and with the "thorn" often mis-judges character. Pinky's uncle is the detective Allan Pinkerton and Pinky tries to detect too "like Mr Bucket in Bleak House".

The narrative has a surface simplicity in the words of Pinky, but is actually subtle, complex and tricky as a snake. You may have noticed that I've avoided using a pronoun for Pinky. There's a good reason for this: I've no idea which pronoun would be right!

Watch Points:

Violence: it with begins the murder of Pinky's parents and their scalping is presented in modest detail. There is a torture scene where someone has a finger cut off by Whittlin’ Walt who hacks his victims to death little bit by little bit. There are shootings and fights and other moderate violence.

Death: as noted it begins with the deaths of Pinky's parents. Other characters are killed throughout the book.

Peril: Pinky's parents' deaths show the enormity of the danger from the start. Pinky learns about Whittlin’ Walt and exactly what he does (see violence, above) a bit later. The opening line shows Pinky waiting to die and there is the inevitable showdown to resolve the predicament at the end. Throughout Pinky is on the run.

Relationships: awareness of the facts of life is assumed. There are numerous "Soiled Doves" (prostitutes), and the complex circumstances of Pinky's birth are discussed.

Anything else: yes, drugs. Belle, the "Soiled Dove", is hooked on opium. Pinky has to visit an opium den where Belle is stoned out of her mind.

Overall: this a swift paced and sharply drawn piece of crime fiction dressed up as a glorious Western. There are lots of genres to discuss, the narration is stylishly done, and there is a wonderful cast of minor characters from Poker Face Jace to local news reporter Sam Clemens (yes, him). The setting  is vivid with its evangelical Christians, and its prostitutes, gangsters, Chinese laundries, saloon bars, and card sharps and its evolving landscape of the new town and its silver mines slapped down in the scorching desert. The speech is great and I loved the slang: one could write paragraphs on "soiled dove" as a metaphor, and I learnt what you do to 'mark twain'. I loved it and I'm delighted that there is a sequel.

Other reviews and useful sites:

The author's blog is here, and she has a page on the slang used in this book here. Her book website is here.

There are reveiws on The Bookette, The New York Times, and The Telegraph, and this latter also has "reading notes" for a book club.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island is beautifully written and quite gripping but gives our age group the challenge of nineteenth century prose, and is surprisingly violent.

Jim Hawkins lives with his parents in the Admiral Benbow. An aggressive new guest obviously has something to hide and on his death Jim and his mother discover a treasure map. The local magistrate Dr Livesey and Squire Trelawny arrange to go hunting for the treasure, taking Jim with them as cabin boy amongst the crew on the Hispaniola. The loose tongued Squire also takes on a one legged ship's cook John Silver who brings a large part of the new crew with him. And so the stage is set for one of the most famous adventures in children's literature. And a very bloody adventure it is too.

Treasure Island has several great strengths: the plot, which, at least once they set sail, is a real page turner; the relative reality of the adventure, which is at times stark and brutal and lets Jim really experience this adult world; and the character of Silver, as never was a man such a traitorous turncoat, nor such a smooth tongued villain, yet somehow, in his likable plausibility, the reader can't help but be slightly relieved that his final fate is not on the gallows.

Watch points:

Violence: this is a violent tale. Sword fights, knives, gun fights are all the order of the day. Jim is intimately involved, and has to kill as much as the men do. He is also pinned to the mast with a knife through his arm, and has to literally tear himself away. The historic setting lends distance however and somehow the 'classic' status will mean you're less likely to get complaints from parents. I feel it is suitable for the whole age group.

Death: again, lots of men, good and bad, innocent and guilty, die. There is also the shadow of the noose for the wrong doers. Human remains form part of one of the plot twists.

Peril: from the start Jim is frightened of the aggressive guest at the inn and his violent companions. Once on the ship there is mutiny afoot, on the island there is the fight to the death for the treasure. At one point Jim, having given his word not to run back to his friends, does the gentlemanly thing and keeps his word, though the reader must fear for his life at this point.

Religion: the religious beliefs of the characters, particularly the more superstitious aspects, are discussed at some length, and form part of the plot.

Anything else: great characters, all of them male. The only female character is Jim's mother who crys and faints a lot. Silver is a very positive physical role model as a disabled character. Having one leg never stops him! One character is mentally ill, having lived in isolation as he was abandoned by pirates some years before.

Overall: when I set this for a book group it was met with much groaning. I think the 'classic' label weighs it down in their minds. They all complained that the lengthy sentences and rather more formal English was unfamiliar and slowed them down, but most admitted that they found it got easier as they got into the book. 

I think it was a shock for them, successful readers that they are, that there are aspects of reading that they still need to practice. I think, for these clever readers, that suddenly finding something difficult is good for them. Often the 'gifted and talented' never get the chance to fail at school but, for the very clever, failure is often the first stepping stone to cracking something very difficult, and handling set backs and seeing them as temporary is as important for this group as any other, yet they experience it less. Whilst it was no-one's favourite book in my group, they did seem to get a lot out of the experience.

For me, it stood out in its quality amongst the the many lighter offerings on today's bookshelves, and I adored it. John Silver is one the cleverest examples of charcterisation in any novel, for adult or child; the half mad Ben Gunn was also skillfully drawn.

Other reviews and useful sites:

It is reviewed on Reading Matters, and there is also a review of Treasure Island alongside various modern versions/sequels on the London Review of Books though you have to subscribe to read it all.

Your main port of call may well be the Robert Louis Stevenson site - maintained by academics, the RLS Website is a freely available online resource dedicated to the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson and is a mine of information. Their schools' page is here.

And I may as well mention my own Robert Louis Stevenson shelf  in my virtual bookshop.