Hilary McKay and the Gaps

[lady_schrapnell]

Not an R&B band, though it might sound like one... Sketchy thought jotting-down - mostly because I want to keep track of very early thoughts for possible end-of-module essay use. (Probably too superficial to be of interest for the academics and too academic to be of interest to the non... )

I finished The Exiles in Love today, finally having managed to wrest it from OD's possession. It's not my favourite of the Exiles books, as the ending is a bit too pat, I think, but it did fit in fascinatingly with the first block we're studying, which is mostly to do with reader response theory. I found the extracts from Iser, about how the reader has to fill in 'structured blanks', 'gaps' and 'indeterminacies' in the text 'on terms set by the text', the least interesting, until my lunchtime reading. It hit me then that McKay leaves an extraordinary number of gaps in all her books (or almost all - I'd have to have a look over them), especially as children's books generally go. Some of these are the kind of mini-mysteries 'solved' by the end of the book (what/who are Saffy's angel/father, for example, or the identity of the 'ghost' in the orchard in EiL) which may or may not be figured out ahead of time by the reader. Some are left for us to intuit and may have a brief sentence lightly touching on the matter - possibly a book or two later. I'm thinking especially about Eve and how she feels about Bill at the moment. But some things are just left extremely elliptical - and I was very much struck by Big Grandma's part in Exiles in Love in this regard. There simply is no real explanation of what had been going on, even at the end, when many misunderstandings are cleared up. We're just left with Phoebe, observing (as always) and thinking about 'the family failing' - (falling hopelessly in love):

Only Phoebe, lingering after the others had gone, saw that Big Grandma did not go
to sleep. She stayed wide awake, staring back and back at the line of blue cloud
where France had been.

They think they've been cured, Phoebe thought, looking down at her sisters as they
made their way across the lower deck and she remembered [name cut to prevent
spoiling] kissing Big Grandma goodbye. -- kissed her hard. Four times,
twice on each cheek. They sounded like smacks.

'There is no cure,' thought Phoebe.

********** Because indenting in Xjournal doesn't work ***********

I'd be very interested to see if there are more gaps left around the doings of adults - always treated as part of the children's stories in both series - than those of the children. Or if I'm just remembering them more. Some of the fun of reading, of course, is figuring out things left to be figured out, before they're actually explained (the framing narrative of dialogue between Ruth and Naomi in TEiL, for example). But it's quite a sophisticated reading job, I'd imagine, and I'd love to hear about how younger children cope with it. And - well, I can't help but think about the way several of us who'd read Permanent Rose and DWJ's Guardian review of it felt as if she'd been talking about quite another book - and now rephrasing it to her filling in those gaps and blanks but not doing so on 'terms set by the text', but rather on her own terms.

Interesting comparison between McKay - for children's books - and Jaclyn Moriarty - same thing in YA - for some time or other.

Comments

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I think I'd have to read the books again paying attention to the gaps but I agree that McKay does seem to have lots. And maybe that is the reason for different interpretations of the text although I hadn't thought of that before! Sounds like it will be an interesting essay.

I've wondered about how children read the McKay books, and would be interested if you hear of any that love them/fill in the gaps/ignore the gaps.

I thought the ending of Exiles in love was too pat as well but enjoyed the rest of the story.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I just asked OD how old she'd been when she first read Exiles in Love and she said 10 or 11 probably. (She discovered McKay for us, with Exiles, a year or two earlier.) She's read it a few times since then, but said quite definitely that she hadn't been thrown at all by the gaps on her first read - it wasn't a question of seeing something on later reads that she'd really missed the first time. When I told her I'd finished it, the first thing she threw out was the 'There is no cure' quote and how sad it was! For the Casson family books, my two were really too old to be useful as child guinea-pigs. (Not that I'm complaining about their willingness to read children's books still, you understand!)

Will be keeping my eyes out for any child responses, and let you know if I find any. (Hope you don't get this twice - first time it didn't post as a reply to your comment, so I deleted and copied as a reply again.)