Fiction Review | June 2003
by Helen Simmons
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I’ve been re-reading a lot of books recently: this is very strange as some things are so entirely different from what you thought they were when you go back to them.  So, it’s been good to read things that are totally new instead!

My first choice is a book by a new author/illustrator, Alexis Deacon called The Slow Loris (Red Fox). When I was little my sister had a toy bush baby and bush babies featured largely in many of our games; she also used to get called “bush baby” as she did have very large brown eyes and a tendency to slothfulness in the mornings (sorry sis!). Maybe that is why I picked this one up – as the Loris does have an element of the bush baby in him. But what a Loris. This Loris lives a life of what appears to be ultimate boredom, cooped up in the drabbest zoo imaginable and labelled as The Slow Loris. BUT.... the Loris has a secret life and is, in fact, the epitome of cool, with a fine line in ties, hats and partying.

I think this is a really remarkable picture book. Alexis Deacon uses colour and space with huge confidence, using few words to say an awful lot about how the still Loris waters really do run deep! You don’t often see picture books that use greys, blacks and browns so boldly (Prowlpuss, Gina Wilson and David Parkins is one of the few I can think of) yet here they perfectly express the shadowiness of the zoo. But then the most marvellous bright colours slowly sneak in, first to suggest, then to truly celebrate the Loris and his (or her – that’s another great thing, as it could be either!) secret. The Loris’s orange Satsuma is just so ORANGE. And when the partying really kicks off, Deacon uses a full- page spread, brighly splattered with an energetic Jackson Pollock rainbow of paint blots.

This is a picture book that uses space with huge imagination and creativity. I always think of a quote I heard Michael Foreman use in a talk, saying you should think of page turns as the punctuation of a picture book. The Slow Loris is punctuated beautifully, Deacon using each spread differently to control the way you read and relate to the unlikely Loris hero. One spread has a series of small film-like stills, showing people coming (and going) to stare at the Loris and then the Loris reaching for the amazing orange Satsuma. The people come and go; but the Loris is in the same place in each shot; you really do see and feel his slowness. And then “One night when Loris was busy, doing particularly noisy things…”some other animals come to see; you lift the flap and instead of being one of the nosy lemurs on the outside trying to look in – hey presto, you’re the Loris on the inside looking out at them! Brilliant. And the page when he does everything FAST is really funny (well, I thought so!).

I think this is a great story, in which text and illustrations really do work together. In reading it you become a part of the Loris’s secret and take it away with you. A really beautiful, thoughtful book for the Loris in everyone.

My second title is Dog by Daniel Pennac (Walker Books) has been short-listed for the Marsh award for children’s books in translation. There are so many great things published in other countries that we never get to read, whether for grown-ups or for children, because the economics of publishing books in translation is rather scary. To me it’s a bit like being told that there is a huge bar of chocolate in the next room with your name on it – then finding out the door is locked. I know money comes into things and publishers have to make it but....

Anyway. Rant over! Dog is the story of a dog, called Dog! He narrowly escapes being drowned at birth, his earliest memories being of his life on a rubbish dump where he is taught all the things any self-respecting dog ought to know by Black Nose: how to follow smell a good smell, how to find food, how to dodge cars. But Black Nose is killed in an accident and Dog decides it’s time he went to the town and found a mistress he could train to be his person. Dog tries out various people for size, but none of them are quite right. Then disaster strikes: he is captured and taken to the Dog Pound. Facing almost certain death, he is rescued and taken home by Plum, a mistress at last. But –as in all - good stories – things don’t quite turn out the way he expected – or not at first anyhow.

The book itself is a lovely Thing. It’s one of those unusual square books, printed on matt paper with a really striking cover design. And Dog runs through many of the pages in the bottom right hand corner, almost like a flick book. I’m not sure how or why but this unusualness adds to the overall experience of reading the book.

I think Dog is beautifully translated by Sarah Adams. I’ve not read the French original (if only I could!), but I love Pennac’s imaginative use of language. Here, for example, is the bit where dog is swept up into the dog catcher’s van:
“He was concentrating ten times harder than usual. Which is why he didn’t hear the grey van. Not that it made any noise. It had been following him for some time now, coasting along beside the pavement. It was a silent as a pike and just as dangerous. When the net came swooping down, it was too late.”

Pennac gives things, feelings and incidents names in dog-speak that are somehow just right: “Total Terrror” is great dog shorthand for the fear that prowls the dog pound.
I also like the way the world gets rearranged from the canine point of view. Dog realises the town is not really much more than “ a rubbish dump that’s bigger and more spread out and better smelling” and a house just a “dump that’s been tidied up”. The eccentric characters dog meets add to this sense of a whole other doggy type universe going on right under your nose. The cats that look after the dog cemetery – aka The Italian, The Artist and The Egyptian - are wonderfully feline and unexpected, and Hyena (a dog) and Wild Boar (his person) have a brilliantly quirky friendship as they help Dog to win back Plum.

If you are tempted to venture into the realms of further fiction in translation, other titles on the shorlist are Where were you Robert? by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Shamer’s Daughter by Lene Kaaberbol, Bambert's Book of Missing Stories by Reinhart Jung, and Brothers, by Ted van Lieshout – all of which worth a read.

Last but definitely not least, is Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit (Bloomsbury): this has long been one of my favourite ever books (up there with Where the Wild Things Are) and it’s just been re-issued. Here is the first paragraph:

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks than come before are only a climb from balmy spring and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much colour. Often at night there is lightening, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things that they are sure to be sorry for after.”

I think it is just a truly beautiful book, a magical fairy tale with a still, calmness all of its own. It is the story of Winnie Foster and the Tuck family – Angus, Mae, Jesse & Miles - and a mysterious stranger. It is the story of what happens when Winnie finds out the Tucks’s secret, of the spring water that wells from the ground in Treegap Wood, which if you drink it means that you will live for ever. And it’s the story of the summer Winnie comes to realise what growing up and getting old really do mean.

I love Natalie Babbit’s descriptions; Mae is a “great potato of a woman with a round sensible face and calm brown eyes”, which is just perfect for her. And you can’t help but know trouble is afoot, when she introduces the stranger:
“He was remarkably tall and narrow, this stranger standing there. His long chin faded off into a thin, apologetic beard, but his suit was a jaunty yellow that seemed to glow a little in the fading light. And a black hat dangled from one hand...”

It’s that jaunty yellow and the black hat; you just know! This is a wise and thoughtful book that you will always be glad you read.

Anyway, I’m probably waaaaay over my space limit now, so I’d better stop. Happy Holiday Reading if you’re off on one; unfortunately, I’ve had mine ......

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