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London Calling, Edward Bloor
Jun. 10th, 2007 10:45 amJust finished this and feeling a bit split-personalitied again. Still a bit sniffy from crying at the ending and yet my critical voice is saying a few less-than-positive things about it.
Great story, starts with Martin Conway (in 2019 - almost missed that, until a kid said something was 'way something or other' and I thought hunh? Not sixteen and a half years ago from now, he didn't!) looking back on events that happened when he was a miserable 7th grader in a horrible Catholic school. On a mother-works-as-secretary-there scholarship. In the class with the obnoxious bully whose grand-father was a big war hero. Happy days.
His Nana starts saying some strange things to him on the phone about having to help a boy named Jimmy, and then dies, leaving him a beautiful old 1930s radio. Over the summer holidays, when he's too depressed to do anything except lie in his basement bedroom and take a lot of naps with the radio playing static, he starts having extraordinarily realistic dreams, in which he finds himself with Jimmy, in London, 1940. He goes through the obligatory stages of thinking it was just a dream (but then how did he know things about London during the war and the Blitz which he hadn't known?) and he was going crazy, but eventually gets help from his older sister Margaret. Now here was one of the things I loved about the book: this is a staunchly Catholic, Irish-American family, with an alcoholic father and just the two kids. Margaret was dutiful about attending the horrible school and always did brilliantly there, and has now got a job doing research for a small, family-owned Encyclopaedia company. But she isn't holier than thou or pleased with her good girl of the family status. Instead she's very worried about Martin and - rather than leave him flounder around doing research on his own on the internet - brings him to her office and helps him use their far superior research resources. Nice.
I'd two problems - the first being that I thought Martin's voice was totally true while describing the alcoholic family parts, and often quite funny in a quiet and sad way, about his wider family, with their shrine to his (maternal) grandfather. But the time-travel parts didn't feel as right to me as they ought to have. Not, definitely not, that I'm an expert on World War II London. Little bits just kept popping up which threw me out, and I'd think someone or other didn't sound right or it didn't seem that someone else would be behaving quite like that. And Martin's and Jimmy's difficulties understanding each other (language and Martin's complete lack of knowledge about the era - someone should have given him a Horrible Histories!) would be followed by their getting something else immediately. Of course, there's the perennial difficulty for writers of historical fiction of getting knowledge across to children reading, without too painfully obviously info-dumping. Very hard to get it just right, and this may have worked perfectly for lots of people.
My second - actually don't know that it was entirely a problem, but it's a very Catholic book. I don't mind that at all, and I certainly don't mind reading a book in which a kid who has a strong religious belief understands things in light of, and expresses his beliefs. It's just that I always have a rippling undercurrent of niggle when reading books in which history/the laws of nature/fate/God intervenes and allows miraculous things to happen in order to help someone fix something. So why something as miraculous as time-travel, even through a dream, just for one person who was stuck with a lot of guilt? Of course it wouldn't be such a good story if it all happened without the visits to London in the Blitz, but still, you have to wonder... (Or at least I do.) And if you don't like books with characters talking a lot about their religious beliefs, it might be better avoided.
I very much wanted to read this for a lot of reasons, so thanks again to Michele for the loan!
Great story, starts with Martin Conway (in 2019 - almost missed that, until a kid said something was 'way something or other' and I thought hunh? Not sixteen and a half years ago from now, he didn't!) looking back on events that happened when he was a miserable 7th grader in a horrible Catholic school. On a mother-works-as-secretary-there scholarship. In the class with the obnoxious bully whose grand-father was a big war hero. Happy days.
His Nana starts saying some strange things to him on the phone about having to help a boy named Jimmy, and then dies, leaving him a beautiful old 1930s radio. Over the summer holidays, when he's too depressed to do anything except lie in his basement bedroom and take a lot of naps with the radio playing static, he starts having extraordinarily realistic dreams, in which he finds himself with Jimmy, in London, 1940. He goes through the obligatory stages of thinking it was just a dream (but then how did he know things about London during the war and the Blitz which he hadn't known?) and he was going crazy, but eventually gets help from his older sister Margaret. Now here was one of the things I loved about the book: this is a staunchly Catholic, Irish-American family, with an alcoholic father and just the two kids. Margaret was dutiful about attending the horrible school and always did brilliantly there, and has now got a job doing research for a small, family-owned Encyclopaedia company. But she isn't holier than thou or pleased with her good girl of the family status. Instead she's very worried about Martin and - rather than leave him flounder around doing research on his own on the internet - brings him to her office and helps him use their far superior research resources. Nice.
I'd two problems - the first being that I thought Martin's voice was totally true while describing the alcoholic family parts, and often quite funny in a quiet and sad way, about his wider family, with their shrine to his (maternal) grandfather. But the time-travel parts didn't feel as right to me as they ought to have. Not, definitely not, that I'm an expert on World War II London. Little bits just kept popping up which threw me out, and I'd think someone or other didn't sound right or it didn't seem that someone else would be behaving quite like that. And Martin's and Jimmy's difficulties understanding each other (language and Martin's complete lack of knowledge about the era - someone should have given him a Horrible Histories!) would be followed by their getting something else immediately. Of course, there's the perennial difficulty for writers of historical fiction of getting knowledge across to children reading, without too painfully obviously info-dumping. Very hard to get it just right, and this may have worked perfectly for lots of people.
My second - actually don't know that it was entirely a problem, but it's a very Catholic book. I don't mind that at all, and I certainly don't mind reading a book in which a kid who has a strong religious belief understands things in light of, and expresses his beliefs. It's just that I always have a rippling undercurrent of niggle when reading books in which history/the laws of nature/fate/God intervenes and allows miraculous things to happen in order to help someone fix something. So why something as miraculous as time-travel, even through a dream, just for one person who was stuck with a lot of guilt? Of course it wouldn't be such a good story if it all happened without the visits to London in the Blitz, but still, you have to wonder... (Or at least I do.) And if you don't like books with characters talking a lot about their religious beliefs, it might be better avoided.
I very much wanted to read this for a lot of reasons, so thanks again to Michele for the loan!
