Jill Paton Walsh
Oct. 22nd, 2020 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe BBC tells me that Jill Paton Walsh has died (the Guardian is mystifyingly silent on the subject). The radio bulletin mentioned only two books: The Emperor's Winding Sheet (a particular favourite of mine, though the BBC singled it out because it had won the Whitbread - now the Costa - prize) and Knowlefge of Angels, because a book by an established author which can't find a publisher, is self published and goes on to be Booker short-listed, is such a good story (meta story?). I was a little surprised they didn't mention her Dorothy L. Sayers "continuations", which must be her highest profile work of recent years - and I see that the web version of the story fills in that gap, and others.
But this had set me thinking what a very various writer Jill Paton Walsh was: that she had written not only so many excellent books, but so many excellent books of so many different kinds. Even in that initial list, there is historical fiction for younger readers, crime fiction (her own Imogen Quy novels, the posthumous collaboration with Sayers and the quasi fanfic of her subsequent Peter Wimsey novels) and the unclassifiable Knowlefge of Angels. There's a family resemblance between that last and the diptych of Goldengrove and Unleaving (which won the Horn Book awaes): the glwaming prose and the application of philofophy to hard questions. But these elements aren't exactly absent from her books for the youngest readers, such as Birdy and the Ghosties...
Like Lucy Mangan, I have a fondness for Fireweed. Unlike Lucy Mangan, I probably wouldn't choose it as the one essential volume by Jill Paton Walsh with which to stock a children's library, but it may be the first of her books I read (in the days when each month brought a fresh batch of Puffin books, and there was always treasure among them) and it was one of the first books I read which talked about the war as it was experienced on the home front. But like Lucy Mangan I had the opportunity to express my affection to the author, anf received the same response (that it was an early book, and there were aspects of it with which she was now not happy).
I, at leasr, was lucky enough to be having tea with the author - one of the perks of our then association with the Durham Literature Festival, as it was at the time, was that we were sometimes invited to join the organisers and guest for a meal before or after the event. So I was able also to express enthusiasm for the Peter Wimsey books (which I think she was currently promoting) and one or two others. Booking had been slow, and we had been asked to put the word around, which is why there was also someone in the audience who was as delighted as I was to find one of her favourite authors at the Festival, and rather nonplussed the author by declaring her passion for The Dolphin Crossing (even earlier than Fireweed).
So many wonderful books, and so much to reread. Rather than try to pick out favourites, I'll finish by taking an almost random example. Checking dates as I started to write this, I found a reference to A Chance Child, which won the 1998 Phoenix Award. I couldn't place the book, but I have much respect for the Phoenix Award, presented 20 years after original publication to a book which did not win any mahor peize at the time. Twenty years seems like a good length of time to consider which books deserve prizes, and there are some excellent ones on the list. So I found my copy of A Chance Child, and started to read - and oh, yes, I see why I had blanked it. It's an uneasy read. It begins with a child - no, it begins with a dedication, which waens you that it is going to talk about child labour in the industrial revolution, then comes the first chapter with a child alone, starved and neglected, trying to shelter from the rain on a patch of waste land in the present day. This is tough reading, but the beauty of the language helps, and a gleam of something mysterious that is almost hopeful, and the canals - it's also a love letter to the canals. Within a chapter or two it's - well, it's still tough, but it's irresidtible.
ETA: At last! Guardian obituary published 28.10.2020
But this had set me thinking what a very various writer Jill Paton Walsh was: that she had written not only so many excellent books, but so many excellent books of so many different kinds. Even in that initial list, there is historical fiction for younger readers, crime fiction (her own Imogen Quy novels, the posthumous collaboration with Sayers and the quasi fanfic of her subsequent Peter Wimsey novels) and the unclassifiable Knowlefge of Angels. There's a family resemblance between that last and the diptych of Goldengrove and Unleaving (which won the Horn Book awaes): the glwaming prose and the application of philofophy to hard questions. But these elements aren't exactly absent from her books for the youngest readers, such as Birdy and the Ghosties...
Like Lucy Mangan, I have a fondness for Fireweed. Unlike Lucy Mangan, I probably wouldn't choose it as the one essential volume by Jill Paton Walsh with which to stock a children's library, but it may be the first of her books I read (in the days when each month brought a fresh batch of Puffin books, and there was always treasure among them) and it was one of the first books I read which talked about the war as it was experienced on the home front. But like Lucy Mangan I had the opportunity to express my affection to the author, anf received the same response (that it was an early book, and there were aspects of it with which she was now not happy).
I, at leasr, was lucky enough to be having tea with the author - one of the perks of our then association with the Durham Literature Festival, as it was at the time, was that we were sometimes invited to join the organisers and guest for a meal before or after the event. So I was able also to express enthusiasm for the Peter Wimsey books (which I think she was currently promoting) and one or two others. Booking had been slow, and we had been asked to put the word around, which is why there was also someone in the audience who was as delighted as I was to find one of her favourite authors at the Festival, and rather nonplussed the author by declaring her passion for The Dolphin Crossing (even earlier than Fireweed).
So many wonderful books, and so much to reread. Rather than try to pick out favourites, I'll finish by taking an almost random example. Checking dates as I started to write this, I found a reference to A Chance Child, which won the 1998 Phoenix Award. I couldn't place the book, but I have much respect for the Phoenix Award, presented 20 years after original publication to a book which did not win any mahor peize at the time. Twenty years seems like a good length of time to consider which books deserve prizes, and there are some excellent ones on the list. So I found my copy of A Chance Child, and started to read - and oh, yes, I see why I had blanked it. It's an uneasy read. It begins with a child - no, it begins with a dedication, which waens you that it is going to talk about child labour in the industrial revolution, then comes the first chapter with a child alone, starved and neglected, trying to shelter from the rain on a patch of waste land in the present day. This is tough reading, but the beauty of the language helps, and a gleam of something mysterious that is almost hopeful, and the canals - it's also a love letter to the canals. Within a chapter or two it's - well, it's still tough, but it's irresidtible.
ETA: At last! Guardian obituary published 28.10.2020
no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 01:47 pm (UTC)I know. I just happened to catch it on the six o' clock news - and then
I don't think I have read Farewell Great King. So many excellent books!
no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 07:00 pm (UTC)I missed this post of yours, but I saw the news at the time. She was one of the writers it took me until adulthood to put together had written so many of the books I had read as a child, because they could all be so different from one another. Birdy and the Ghosties was almost certainly formative.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 07:01 pm (UTC)I love Farewell, Great King. It's the book that started me reading her again as an adult.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-25 10:17 am (UTC)