I know which neglected book I'd choose for my desert island, writes Griselda Heppel

 

Not being very organised, I never know what I’m going to write about from one blogpost to the next. I rely on something in the news/ether/twittersphere/dusty back of my brain to leap, as it were, to the fore and inspire me; and fortunately – with 3 days to go – a desert island disc type question on Twitter has done just that.

If you were invited to discuss a neglected book on https://www.backlisted.fm/, what would you choose? 

Never having heard of this website, I looked it up and discovered it to be one of the most popular book podcasts. On each episode a guest (usually a writer) chooses a book they love and makes the case for why it deserves to be better known. The result is a rich treasure trove featuring half-forgotten classics ranging from The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy to Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, discussed by writers of such heft as Mark Haddon, Kit de Waal and William Fiennes. 

In the unlikely event I’d ever be asked to contribute, I know exactly what I’d choose. If they’ll allow a children’s book, that is (they do, sometimes). The Log of the Ark by Kenneth Walker and Geoffrey Boumphrey is a wonderfully written version of the bible story, full of invention and humour, both witty and absurd, with charming line illustrations. First published in 1923, it went through several reprints, the last one in the 1970s. And while I hold it to be every bit as enchanting and timeless as its contemporary forever-in-print Winnie the Pooh, I can’t see any publisher relaunching it. Because alongside all the warmth and fun of a bunch of chatty, squawky, roaring and harroomphing animals sharing cabins, learning to eat porridge instead of grass (none of them are carnivorous – as yet), organising games of skittles and concert parties to pass the time, there are some very dark 

moments indeed. 

The arrival of the Seventy-Sevens on board.

A strange, sinister creature, the Scub, is discovered on board. While Noah finds him unnerving, he does all he can to make him feel welcome, as to do otherwise would not be right or fair. Which gives this menacing creature plenty of scope to spread his poison throughout the ark, planting thoughts in the minds of the strong animals and terrifying the weaker ones. Some of the funniest and most endearing creatures simply don’t survive. To let children laugh at and grow fond of characters only to abandon them to a heartless fate is something no publisher today would accept from a writer for 9 – 12 year-olds.

The Loathsome Scub leaves the Ark

 

So were children tougher up to 50 years ago, more able to cope with this kind of harsh realism? In a way, yes. Until the 1970s, the bible played a much greater part in the UK's cultural surroundings. From a very young age children were used to stories of evil worming its way into human relationships and corrupting them: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the wickedness of mankind before the Flood. The Loathsome Scub is just another depiction of how bad things happen to good people. Watching him subtly set one creature against another, you wish he’d never come on board the ark, or that Noah might catch him in the act of terrorising defenceless animals and be justified in expelling him. But the Scub is too clever for that.

This illustration of people’s powerlessness in the face of determined evil might seem a tough message for a 9 year-old reader, but there is hope too. The rain does stop. The floodwaters recede. The ark comes to rest on dry land and the animals gallop off into fresh, green meadows and freedom – all within the parameters of a new, hard reality of survival. The serene, antediluvian equilibrium has been swept away; the world is now divided between carnivores and herbivores, the hunters and the hunted. You just have to adapt, that’s all. Evil can never be eradicated but life is beautiful too.

The elephant struggles with bathtime soap.

In our more secular age, in which justice and equality for all are highly valued, the Scub would have to get his comeuppance. Smaller animals might be threatened, but they’d survive. (Unless the book were rewritten for a YA audience, in which case bleak realism and hopelessness may reign unchecked.) Our instinct to protect younger readers from the random unfairness of life is totally understandable and I feel it myself as a writer for this age. 

How the perfectly round wumpetty dumps get over the hill.

At the same time I regret the fact that generations of children will never be able to laugh at the elephant’s difficulty with bathtime soap, or the wumpetty dumps’ totally unique mode of getting about, or the hippopotamus’s attempt at poetry.

And that is their loss.

COMING IN APRIL 2021

The Fall of a Sparrow 

by Griselda Heppel, author of 

Ante's Inferno 

www.griseldaheppel.com 

https://griseldaheppel.wordpress.com/