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The Children on the Top Floor
Aug. 23rd, 2008 09:00 pmI buy books faster than I can read them. Mostly I buy from second-hand or charity shops, where, if you see a book you want, you'd better buy it now. As extravagances go, this isn't so bad: the books are rarely expensive, and it gives me a pleasant sense of security, knowing that I am not going to run out of things to read. And once in a while, when I don't know what I want to read next, I dip in at random and pull out a book.
That's how I came to be reading Noel Streatfeild's The Children on the Top Floor. It's a curious book, first published in 1964, but with the plot structure of Ballet Shoes, updated in some ways, and in some ways not. Four unrelated children are brought up in the household od a largely absent single man, by a Nannie figure and others. They fall almost by default into earning their way in performance, which suits some of them better than others. One of the children succeeds so well that she threatens to become quite spoiled, but learns the error of her ways. Then the man who has brought the children together goes missing: at first things go on as normal, but as his absence is prolonged, there are money problems, and at last it seems that the house will have to be sold and the children split up.
Since this is Noel Streatfeild, it's an entertaining story, with some neat descriptions and characterisations. The relationships between the four children are beautifully done, the clear-eyed knowledge of each others characters and the affection which flourishes despite it. But two things in particular strike me as interesting - that it, apart from the extent to which it revisits the earlier - and, let's face it, better - book. ( And I'll put them behind a cut so that I can talk about the book as a whole. )
That's how I came to be reading Noel Streatfeild's The Children on the Top Floor. It's a curious book, first published in 1964, but with the plot structure of Ballet Shoes, updated in some ways, and in some ways not. Four unrelated children are brought up in the household od a largely absent single man, by a Nannie figure and others. They fall almost by default into earning their way in performance, which suits some of them better than others. One of the children succeeds so well that she threatens to become quite spoiled, but learns the error of her ways. Then the man who has brought the children together goes missing: at first things go on as normal, but as his absence is prolonged, there are money problems, and at last it seems that the house will have to be sold and the children split up.
Since this is Noel Streatfeild, it's an entertaining story, with some neat descriptions and characterisations. The relationships between the four children are beautifully done, the clear-eyed knowledge of each others characters and the affection which flourishes despite it. But two things in particular strike me as interesting - that it, apart from the extent to which it revisits the earlier - and, let's face it, better - book. ( And I'll put them behind a cut so that I can talk about the book as a whole. )
