Well if, at this late stage, you’re still looking for a rich, warm, affirmative book to climb into during the next few days, this could be it. I have read Sally Vickers before – the delightful Miss Garnet’s Angel at least twice, for example – but somehow this 2018 title had passed me by. And it shouldn’t have done because it’s a glorious hymn to power of reading, and especially children’s reading, to change lives. Definitely my sort of thing.
Sylvia Blackwell takes a post as children’s librarian in East Mole, a small fictional town in Wiltshire. It is the 1950s which Vickers captures perfectly. She is a year younger than me so, as I do, she vividly remembers children eating Spangles, grown ups measuring each other by their war experience and 11+ anxiety dominating everything. There are few TV sets, better off people drive Hillmans and everyone is still influenced by recent rationing. Class prejudice – in both directions – prevails.
Young, keen and passionate about books, Sylvia finds a house to rent and sets about reforming the children’s library. She makes friends locally, the children love her and there’s an ultimately educative liaison – no spoilers. At work though, her reforming zeal is disapproved of by her boss who is a rather complicated character. She buys books for the library, teams up with the primary school and is very quickly able to Make a Difference, as we would say now. But inevitably it goes wrong and suddenly she’s no longer approved of by many of the colourfully drawn inhabitants of East Mole although some of them surprise her. Meanwhile she has a troubled relationship with her own parents, especially her mother back in her native London suburb so there’s guilt there too.
But it’s Part Two which really got me. We’re whizzed forward 60 years where a grandmother – it’s a while before Vickers names her – is a globally successful children’s novelist in the manner of, perhaps, Jacqueline Wilson. And amidst much brouhaha she’s returning to East Mole, where she grew up, to do a book event, as she does regularly all over the world. Her nicely depicted grandchildren and their parents are accompanying her to East Mole and they’re proud of her, of course, when they’re not on the internet. I was quite moved by all this once I realised who Granny must be. And there’s a wonderful ending which put me in mind of Morpurgo’s The Amazing Story of Adophus Tips or several of Victoria Hislop’s novels. And what a splendid idea to add end notes about all the titles which are mentioned in the novel. Yes, let’s hear if for reading good and loud.
Go on – read it, even if you have to sneak away. I can promise you an entertaining, uplifting respite from preparing Brussels sprouts, playing Monopoly or watching Christmas specials on TV.
