Siobhan Dowd - Bog Child

 

Siobhan Dowd was nearing the end of a fight with breast cancer by the time she completed the manuscript for Bog Child. Anyone expecting a story morbid, self-pitying or relentlessly miserable as a result of this, however, is in for a surprise. Bog Child is precisely the opposite; its word play, dialogue and character interplay sparkle and crackle with life, exuberance, and wit. Dowd is an author that can make what initially seemed to me a clichéd and hackneyed idea for a plot feel as fresh, new and challenging as any more overtly experimental works available for its target market.

The plot alternates between the points of view of Fergus, a teenager growing up in Northern Ireland in the early 80's at the peak of the Troubles, and Mel, the 'bog child' of the title, in the months leading up to her eventual sacrifice by her people during the Iron Age. Fergus discovers Mel's preserved remains while stealing peat with his uncle. His brother is on hunger strike in jail, a political prisoner for the IRA. Fergus has to juggle the implications of this along with his own ambitions to go to university, his friendship with border guard Owain, and the vague and somewhat sinister demands placed on him by his brother’s friend, Michael Rafters. Along with this, Fergus becomes involved in the subsequent investigation into what happened to Mel, and begins a romance with the daughter of the site archaeologist, Cora. And I'll leave the intricacies of the plot at that, partly so I don't give too much away and partly because a straightforward description of the book's narrative does not come close to encapsulating what it is that makes the book so captivating. It is Dowd's easy, flowing style, strongly drawn characters (even the walk on parts in this book speak and feel like people you've met down the pub or knew at school or somewhere), and slyly observed humour that all remain consistent from first page to last, and ensures the novel is an enjoyable read even as it visits some very dark places in its themes and settings.

An oft-repeated slice of writing advice is to know your characters inside and out, as well as you would members of your own family - easier said than done, but Siobhan Dowd does this perfectly throughout Bog Child. Family members talk, act and bicker like a bunch of people who've lived side by side for years. Teenagers joke and take the piss in a way that feels realistic and unforced. The adults aren't distant authority types or flat background figures but rounded individuals with their own personalities, concerns and worries. There's no clichéd sinister, snarling IRA member types or outstandingly brave heroes, just a bunch of people trying to do the best they can and stick it out through an unpalatable set of circumstances in an area where religious and political differences threaten to boil to the surface and become violent at any time. If there is any criticism I can come up with for Bog Child, it is that the Iron Age scenes involving Mel and her family don't have the same level of depth and resonance that the 1980's scenes do and can occasionally feel somewhat rushed - but considering that Dowd faced a race against time to finish the work before succumbing to illness, I found this easy to overlook.

Bog Child is not the sort of book I would have normally read if it hadn't been a winner of the Carnegie. I wasn't looking forward to it at all, expecting it to be po-faced, preachy and painfully worthy while falling over itself to hit its reader over the head with a message of how unbearable the Troubles were, complete with pages of suffering and wailing and forgive-me-fathers from its cast. In actuality it is none of those things, it is the exact sort of story the Carnegie should be rewarding - funny, thought-provoking, excellently written and plotted, and with characters you get to know, care about and think of long after you've put it down. Its ending is powerful, upsetting and shocking, but as expertly handled and well realised as everything that leads up to it. It's our loss that Siobhan Dowd sadly passed away before fully realising her tremendous talent, but Bog Child alone should assure her legacy as a star of the young adult fiction genre.

 

 

Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls

In his brief introduction to A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness tells us that the book is based upon the last idea of the late Siobhan Dowd - a winner of the Carnegie herself a couple of years previously for the superb Bog Child. He also mentions his wise choice not to try to emulate Dowd's style, but to take the original premise and put his own spin on it (the impression I got was that Dowd had completed no more than the bare bones of the idea and possibly a basic plot outline). 

This results in a book that doesn't read to me as typical of either author's output.

The plot is simple: Conor's mother is dying of a terminal illness, and he is finding it difficult to cope with. He's fell out with his best friend, he's being bullied at school, and he feels emotionally distant from his haughty grandmother and his father, who has remarried and moved to the USA. Conor is understandably angry, upset and confused as his mother gradually gets more and more ill, resulting in a number of incidents that may or may not be down to the presence and influence of the titular monster.

The monster appears outside Conor's bedroom window near the beginning of the story and shows up several other times. He tells Conor three stories that raise a number of questions regarding our perceptions of the characters and the moral choices they make. The monster encourages Conor, at times, to behave in ways disturbing and destructive to the people around him, before its true purpose is revealed at the end of the story.

This is the only book to have received both the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway (the equivalent medal for illustration) in the same year. The version I bought was the cheaper, text-only version, although I did have a quick glance at Jim Kay's dark, atmospheric illustrations and was impressed with what they added to Ness' work.

Patrick Ness is one of the best writers of young adult fiction of his generation, and like all his work, A Monster Calls is brisk, engaging and adds just enough description and character quirks without it overshadowing the story. Compared to the scope and emotional heft of Dowd's Bog Child and Ness' own Chaos Walking trilogy, though, A Monster Calls feels somewhat slight to me in comparison. I've lost a parent myself and was expecting to be reduced to floods of tears at the end, but the story is too brief and Conor's other issues too quickly resolved in order for me to engage with his character as fully as I needed in order for the end of the story to have the powerful emotional pull that I thought it would. As sad as the ending was, it didn't quite have the emotional impact that I thought it should have done.

I also couldn't help wondering what Siobhan Dowd would have done with this story had she been able to complete it herself - I'm fairly sure the plot might have gone down something of a different path to the one Ness chose. The emotional impact of a powerful writer such as Dowd writing about a woman dying as this was happening to her personally might have carried a weight and substance that Ness, for all his undoubted and innate skills as an author, wasn't quite able to conjure up.

A Monster Calls is as well-written, polished and professional as you would expect from two such talented writers, but the overall sum of its parts is somewhat less than either author's best work.