The fourth book on my list of Hogarth Shakespeare publications, New Boy is a modern retelling of "Othello". Tracy Chevalier has set her story in a suburban school in Washington D.C. The students are shortly to move to a junior high school so are 14 going on 15 despite some reviews to contrary ages (even that in The Guardian). Osei is the first black boy to arrive at the school. Well we are in the 1970's.
It is interesting how the author weaves elements of the tragedy into her version of race and power. There was a point about halfway when I did get a little tired of the playground bickering, but ultimately this short novel delivers an emotional punch. Though what Shakespeare would have thought about the skipping rhymes would be something.
Helen Dunmore's first novel gives hints of what is to come. All her other ten novels on my bookshelf are better, but Zennor in Darkness is still worth reading. I thought at first it seemed very ordinary, but the story and the writing soon picks up. It is an interesting mix of fact and fiction. The central character is a young Clare Coyne who lives with her father in St Ives, a short way from Zennor where D H Lawrence has taken a cottage with his wife Frieda. The writer was actually there in 1917 when the book is set, and the fact that Frieda is German makes for a tense atmosphere with many of the locals.
When Clare meets Lawrence they strike up a friendship. Clare is encouraged to visit his wife as she knows no women there. Clare retorts "Is that sufficient recommendation - the fact that I'm a woman". I preferred the fictional relationships of Clare and her cousins family, making do with the limited resources of wartime. The trauma of those relations who died or return damaged is eloquently described as is the impact on the community.
Not everyone has a great childhood. Despite a mother, not exactly from hell but definitely not heavenly, who packs her off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity, Rose Tremain did "enjoy" an education far superior than many and which paved the way for her later success as a writer. So this memoir is a story of ups (her relationships with her sister, school friends and teachers are the best part of the book) and the downs of a mother who was selfish and self centred. I wasn't interested in the descriptions of places where she lived, but I did feel transported to this early part of her life. At the end there is an Afterword of three pages. I hope this will form the basis of the next chapter of her autobiography.
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