Fiction Reviews | October 2003
by Helen Simmons
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It was one of those strange co-incidences that Simon’s last review had a historical flavour as I’ve also been having a bit of a historical reading frenzy at the moment - although I am very humbled that I cannot match his Latin greetings!

I’ve just finished The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick. This is the kind of historical reading I love; the novel is set I’m not exactly sure exactly when, in an un-named place – but the detail is so dense that you fill in these gaps as you will from the knowledge you have. In my mind, it ended up being set somewhere on the Orkney islands at some point during the dark ages, when Viking raiders were sweeping south across the British Isles. But this is only because a) I’ve been to the Orkney islands (which are totally amazing, by the way – if you ever get the chance to go there – GRAB IT) and b) I have read quite a lot about that period of history.

This is one of the things I like about this way of writing about history; it involves you in the process of filling in the gaps – if you want to – and makes you realise that this is probably how some history gets written.

It’s essentially the story of the Storn, a tribe who are facing disaster. Crops have worsened over successive years, the fish catches have dwindled and rumours about the deadly Dark Horse sweep through the village more and more often. Sigurd is one of the tribe, and Mouse is an outsider, found by the tribe in a wolves’ lair and adopted as one of their own and this is their story.

Many of the tribe fear Mouse as she can ‘see’ things using a strange magic unknown to them but to Sigurd she is a sister, and one he is very fond of. The Storn’s troubles become a whole lot worse when Sigurd and Mouse find a mysterious box on the beach when they are searching for food; with the box, comes an even more mysterious stranger, Ragnald, and the deepest danger.

Sedgwick’s writing fills the book with a sense of the harshness of the tribe’s life and of the threat that seems always to be hanging over them, at the mercy as they are of the elements and the hostility of the other tribes that share this world. Here’s a bit, just to give you an idea:

“Imagine you’re standing at the top of a hill. It’s a very steep hill and beside you is a large rock. A boulder, huge and round and heavy. Now, put the sole of your foot against the rock as it stands on the brink of the hill. Push. Push hard and the boulder starts to roll down the hill. It moves slowly at first, as if unsure of what it will do, but then it sped up until it hurtles headlong into the future. There is nothing that can stop it now.

Well, this is what happened to us. Everything that came next was unstoppable and would change our lives for ever.”

The Dark Horse has an immensely strong sense of place – the shore line, the stone brochs of the village, the harsh moorland scoured by deep valleys that lie above and beyond the settlement really do jump into your mind’s eye. The voice of Sigurd is equally strong as he narrates his story. Marcus Sedgwick has managed to combine perfectly the feeling of time moving powerfully and inexorably on in this novel, interspersed this with wonderful sections in which the details of thought, feeling and emotion are described. His descriptions of violence and action are great - economical, shocking and terrifying.

Rosemary Sutcliff is a master at this, but I like the way Sedgwick does it too; Ragnald and the Dark Horse are pretty scary! This is a novel about violence, about betrayal and friendship and about responsibility and leadership. All of which sounds pretty serious – which it is – but it’s also immensely readable and absorbing. I’m looking forward to getting hold of Sedgwick’s newest book, The Book of Dead Days, which is also on the Guardian children’s fiction shortlist.

In a historical vein of a slightly different kind is Jonathan Stroud’s book, The Last Siege. Through a strange mixture of Christmas holiday boredom, family stresses and unhappiness, Emily, Simon and Marcus end up at the centre of a the strangest siege that’s ever taken place within the crumbling walls of the castle at the centre of this book. And although their ‘siege’ is set very much in the present, the past is all around them all of the time, literally and metaphorically.

Emily is plain bored with the long dead days of winter, stuck at home with her parents over Christmas; Simon’s family tend to stray on the wrong side of the law and he is desperate to make his own way; Marcus….is just strange. Each driven by their own private demons, they find a way to break in to the castle without being seen by Harris, the caretaker. And then it’s Emily who suggests that that they should come again and this time, stay for the night.

What I really like is the way Jonathan Stroud describes how at different points in the story each of them becomes the one powering on their obsessive plans to take possession of the castle when the other two waver. At one point it is Simon, who seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of castle architecture and etiquette. At other points it is Emily, desperate for the excitement of doing something forbidden and frightening. And at others it is Marcus, who carries the other two away with his vivid and powerful stories of things that happened in the rooms and outside the walls of the very building they are trying to conquer. And yet as the book reaches its conclusion, you become increasingly less certain about what to think of Marcus and his stories.

I really like his oddness; when Emily first meets him the thought crossed my mind that he was a ghost. But he is a much less conventional and much more disturbing character than that and you are really never quite sure whether he is a victim or an obsessive pathological liar.

The Last Siege leaves you with images of a bleak, winter landscape; lots of greys and whites with the dark walls and remaining turrets of the castle standing out starkly. Also with a sense of being chilled to the bone! This all makes it sound a bit grim, which in a way it is; but it is also absorbing because it’s different. And I like the feeling you get that this castle is once again at the centre of another complicated story which will become as much a part of its history as all of the knights and ladies Marcus conjures up so vividly.

And now for something completely different! I can’t think of a clever way to link to this so I won’t even try! It’s not remotely historical, but it’s my bit of retro-indulgence for this time. The Frog & Toad series by Arnold Lobel have long been particular favourites of mine and over the summer I was entertaining a friend’s little boy who is just desperate to be able to read. His big sister steams through the most mighty thick tomes in days and he hasn’t quite got the hang of it – yet. We were looking at some books and suddenly …….I thought these would be perfect – and they were. He even managed to read one story all by himself (well, nearly). These really are small masterpieces; perfectly formed, simple but clever and absorbing with fantastic illustrations. And they are so funny: “One day in summer Frog was not feeling well. Toad said, “Frog, you are looking quite green”. “But I always look green”, said Frog. “I am a frog” (From The Story(in Frog & Toad are Friends).

They work through humour, through repetition and through structure. Lobel uses that most basic of story patterns – the joke – to supply the set up, the suspense and the denouement for each of the small stories and they are beautifully built, with very clear beginnings, middles and ends – often with a hugely satisfying (but predictable) twist at the end. His language is economical but elegant and the pictures contribute wonderfully to his portrayal of our two idiosyncratic heroes. I’d forgotten how truly good they were!

And on that note, I shall finish: happy autumn reading!

Helen

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