“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers
Definitions (2007) (First published 1999)
334 pages

My initial thoughts, some of which I typed into a text document while I was reading the book: Oh. That’s a surprising start. And I remember wondering: Will there be boys kissing later on? You can just see the good influences of certain online friends creeping into my thought process, XD. The answer, by the way, is “yes”, but it’s more incidental than being something actually important to the plot.

I don’t really know much about the Second World War. The only parts that are really familiar are often the parts where my country is involved, thanks to the (compulsory) Malaysian History subject I took when I was in school. I know the major events, and some of the major battles, but when it comes down to it, I know very little of the whole thing. (It makes me wonder: whatever did I learn during that one year of World History when I was in the Fourth Form? I vaguely remember chapters about the ancient civilizations and the rise of Christianity and Islam and the Renaissance period. Surely it didn’t stop there?)

Postcards from No Man’s Land is partially about World War II. The story begins with Jacob Todd, an English boy in the present-day (1995, I think?) Amsterdam, who’s there to visit the family that had taken care of his grandfather during the Battle of Anhem, and it’s the fifty-first anniversary of the battle. Jacob, travelling alone for the first time, finds himself facing unexpected situations and having to make difficult decisions.

Parallel to his story is the story of Geertrui, the young woman who takes care of Jacob’s grandfather during WWII. The narrative switches between Jacob wandering through the streets of Amsterdam and Geertrui struggling for survival during the war, and the stories eventually come together.

I mostly liked the book. It’s well written, a bit slow at points, but the shifting narratives between Jacob (in third person) and Geertrui (in first person) didn’t bother me, which is a really good thing because the first person POV often gets on my nerves, and the last book with dual narratives — that would be Diana Wynne Jones’s The Merlin Conspiracy — left me gritting my teeth in frustration. The ending is a bit clunky and perhaps a little hasty, but it still works for me. The later parts of Geertrui’s narrative reminded me — very sharply, actually — of Daisy in Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now: there was something similar in the desperate, we-only-have-this-moment tone in both of the girls’ voices.

I found Jacob’s story more interesting than Geertrui’s. His self-consciousness and shyness and his trying to accept himself is rather endearing. And I rather liked following him around Amsterdam as he discovers the city (and himself) than reading about the hardships of war; besides, he ends up having rather interesting conversations with Daan, Geertrui’s grandson, one of them about art history. Curious stuff.

More than anything else, this is another coming-of-age story — about sexuality and discovering yourself, finding your way, making choices, falling in love. The book also touches on other issues such as euthenasia and fidelity and adultery and bisexuality, and you’re pretty much left to make up your own mind at the end of it.

This book won both the Carnegie Medal (1999) and the Printz Award (2003). Apparently the book is part of a sequence called The Dance Sequence, and this is the fifth book. Other books in the sequence are: Breaktime, Dance on my Grave, Now I Know and The Toll Bridge. The library only has the sixth (and last) book, This Is All: the Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, which I’ll probably borrow one of these days. Not any time soon, though. It’s really, really thick! And so many frustrated reviewers. Hm. We’ll see.

Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
Puffin Books (1983)
304 pages

You know how you pick up at a book not knowing anything about it, and when you finish it, it seems impossible that it ever sat anywhere besides on your “favourites” shelf? Goodnight Mister Tom is one of those books. I was roaming around the bookstore and just randomly picked up the book because I liked the cover (my sister didn’t — I am having serious doubts in how up-to-date my tastes are), and studying it, the cover said it was about an evacuee in the Second World War (cool, I thought, as long it’s not about adventure in the trenches) and that it was a winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award (that must mean it’s some good, I thought).

I got home, flipped through the first few pages before bed, thinking I’ll read it the next weekend. As usual, that didn’t happen — I started reading and I didn’t stop until I finished.

Willie Beech is eight, scrawny, small for his age and extremely timid. At the brink of World War II he is evacuated to Little Weirwold in the English countryside, and finds himself in the care of the gruff, solitary Tom Oakley. Willie is scared of everything when he first arrives — Sammy, Tom’s friendly dog, the horse, the other children, and of course Mister Tom himself. He’s a bad boy, or so his mother has led him to believe, and he keeps expecting Tom to punish him for everything he does. Tom is puzzled by this, but he then sees the bruises covering the boy’s body, and reads the letter the boy’s mother sends along with the belt she says to beat Willie with if he’s bad, he begins to understand a little of Willie’s life with his single mother in London.

If anything, the start of the book reminds me of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, with the grumpy old grandfather thawing off by stages. But it’s obvious that Tom is a kind old man from the start — he decides to get Willie new clothes and boots, and reads to the boy at night. The folks in the village are amazed to see Tom, who had pretty much been a recluse since his wife died, enquiring in the village about clothes and provisions for the boy and volunteering for watches.

Willie learns about making friends with kids his own age for the first time, getting on very well with Zach, another evacuee, and the other children in the village. He learns how to read and write, and how it feels to be loved. He grows up, both physically and emotionally, but of course he has to go back to London one day. And one day, that day comes, and he returns to London to his mother.

The characters are wonderful and beautifully realised. Will and Mister Tom, of course, and Zach particularly is my favourite. (Each time he goes “I say!” I have to grin.) Will goes through a lot, and when I realise he has to go through more hardship after what had seemed a perfect interlude, I actually groaned and went, “Oh come on, the kid deserves a break!”

The dialogue is written pretty much the way the people speak, but I didn’t mind that. It’s not so hard to get really — just trying reading those lines out loud!

The novel deals with a lot of things: friendship, love, abuse, and life and death. It’s also about family and changes, never giving up and learning to let go. The description of the abuse Will endures isn’t overly graphic, but it’s the aftermath makes my stomach clench. At one point I was thinking that the writer was putting Will through too much, but you have to admire his grit and determination to make it through. Heartwarming and bittersweet at points, this is a book I’d recommend to everyone.