Big Families – For Better or Worse

Large families have a sort of glow to them. As if being part of one is the ideal. Three books I read recently all feature large families. And whilst some of the glow is there, there is also a darker side.

This is particularly the case in the first of my selection, The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers by South African author, Finuala Dowling. Protagonist, Paddy Dowling, marries vivacious Vandy and together they raise eight children in their home in Cape Town, South Africa. Paddy works there as a frustrated copywriter on famous advertising campaigns, constantly longing to be a ‘real’ writer of fiction. His many children cause him great anxiety which results in explosive anger, and Paddy feels increasingly alienated by them. He turns to alcohol and declines. This fact is blamed on what we now know as PTSD from his service as a soldier in WWII.

His biographer and daughter, Gina Dowling, is similarly fraught with the insecurities and depressions of a writer’s life. ‘Fragments from a writer’s diary’ are interspersed with the actual writing product, the main story, and these sections reveal a woman who hates her day job and wonders if the book will be any good. The characters make for unpleasant ones, ones I wasn’t drawn to. Although I didn’t enjoy feeling this way, Dowling’s spare style of writing left a lasting impression on me. Its flowing simplicity is enough for the reader to get the gist. It helps to retain pathos and belies the amount of research that must have gone into such a detailed story. The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers is cleverly and beautifully written.  

In The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett I encountered a much happier version of large families. This one is also not without its difficulties, however. For Mr and Mrs Ruggles – a dustman and washerwoman respectively – money is in short supply, and all of their seven children cause them anxiety. The first seven chapters are dedicated to each of the seven children, while the last three chapters cover a family outing to London. The situations described often involve clothing. How it is ironed when it shouldn’t be, shrunk by mistake, lost at sea, ripped in embarrassing places, and generally endangered by mess when it should be clean. The two chapters I enjoyed best revolve around twin brothers, James and John, who join a gang that demands its members ‘have adventures’. Adventures the pair have indeed. James accidentally stows away on a ship, and John lands up in a stranger’s car and bizarrely attends a birthday party at a rich person’s house. The scrapes get more and more involved, so that I found myself wincing as I read. But the family is a loving one, and there is nothing dark or seriously scary. The Family from One End Street is a delightful, funny read for children. It won the Carnegie medal for children’s literature in 1957.

Lastly, and briefly, the third book I read featuring a large family, is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J K Rowling. Harry’s best friend is Ronald Weasley. Compared to Harry’s dreadful aunt, uncle and cousin with whom Harry lives, Ronald’s family are down-to-earth, caring and generous people/wizards and witches. But, as with the Ruggles of The Family at One End Street, the Weasleys lack money. Five of their seven children attend Hogwarts School of Magic, and clothing, supplies and books are always bought with great difficulty. Interestingly, all the children in the Ruggles family and in the Weasley family have red hair. This adds to their being seen as different.

So, from love, support and togetherness, to money troubles, personality challenges and alienation, these books all showed me the glow and the darkness of large families.  

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Imperfect Places and People

Without really planning to, in April and May this year I read three books all set (primarily) in Africa. Through them I learnt things I’d never known, or most likely had forgotten. It was also interesting to note in all of them a strain of imperfection – imperfect places and imperfect characters.

The first, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, is set mostly in Ethiopia, an Ethiopia that faces revolution, civil war and a movement to liberate neighbouring Eritrea. The presence of multiple cultural influences in the book adds to its richness, Italian being one of those, since Italy occupied Ethiopia for a period. It is the political situation that leads to the American section of the book. One of the protagonists, Marion Stone, has to flee being wrongly accused of being part of the Liberation Movement. He heads for the Bronx, New York, where he works as a doctor. In a city so often lauded for its quality and status, New York is presented here in its imperfections. Compared to hospitals with more prestige, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour where Marion works, is underfunded and attracts a mix of foreign doctors. The inequity in modern-day America is highlighted, but is done so in a matter-of-fact way, which I appreciated. The earlier story contains a wonderfully detailed family life at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, and for the full book we are treated to in-depth explanations of medical procedures. Although fascinating, the latter is a little heavy-handed. Still, it is described lyrically and forms the really intense parts of the story.

The Crossing by Manjeet Mann, actually starts in Ethiopia’s neighbouring country, the now-independent Eritrea. Sammy, a teenager who lives there, flees enforced conscription and makes for England. His journey as a refugee is harrowing and it is remarkable that he makes it as far as the English Channel. Here he has just one last body of water to swim across before reaching his goal, ‘the promised land’. At the same time, we read about Natalie, a teenager who lives in England. An England that is far from the ‘promised land’ of Sammy’s imagination. Natalie’s family is to be turfed out of their accommodation, her brother protests bitterly about ‘refugees coming in to take the locals’ jobs’, and Natalie grieves her late mother. It is the latter that spurs Natalie into swimming the channel to raise money for a refugee charity. In a series of coincidences Natalie and Sammy learn about each other and set out at the same time to ‘cross’ the English channel. The Crossing, aimed at Young Adults, is written in verse, in simple language, and with clever use of typography and concrete poetry. It was shortlisted in this year’s Carnegie Medal.

The Country of Others by Leila Slimani is set in Morocco in the 1950s when Morocco is still a French colony and then later rebels against its colonisers. The main characters are Amien and his wife Mathilde and their daughter Ayesha. Amien is Moroccan, Arabic and Black, while Mathilde is French, Catholic and White. They meet in France during WWII, when Amien is conscripted by the French to fight for them against the Germans. I found this interesting – how difficult must it have been to for Amien to fight for the coloniser to whom he did not really owe allegiance? I say ‘don’t really’ because a great deal of ambiguity is written into the characters. The relationship between Mathilde and Amien especially is reflective of the relationship between Morocco and France: at once in love and in hate. This relationship is likened in the book to the Lironge tree – an orange tree into which a lemon tree has been grafted. The result is an unpalatable fruit. Fittingly, Morocco itself is not portrayed as salubrious, unlike the delight I understand the tourist’s Morocco to be. The characters in The Country of Others are unlikable, a fact that only serves to underscore the ambiguity and to provide a good, thought-provoking read.

Exploring England in the Footsteps of Beatrix Potter

England is an excellent tourist destination. As I was planning an upcoming trip to the UK I was reminded of this fact while leafing through photos of a 2010 holiday there. From accessible transport and places to visit, to consistently excellent food and tour guides – that trip to the UK was educational and enjoyable. The quality and availability of many of the historic places and parks/gardens I had visited was due in no small part to the National Trust. Founded in 1895 to permanently preserve valuable buildings or beautiful countryside, this charity organisation protects over 300 historic houses and gardens, 49 industrial monuments and mills, owns more than 623,000 acres of countryside and over 700 miles of coastline. This vast organisation has positively influenced residents’ attitudes towards their environment; call it ‘national pride’ if you will, but I detected in people a real appreciation for their country’s history and environment.

The setting for the Beatrix Potter movie. Photo: Brenda Daniels

The map I misread

The Lake District is a fine example of the National Trust’s presence. I had stayed there in a tiny village called Far Sawrey, near Lake Windermere. Just a kilometre along the winding country road from the Far Sawrey Hotel is ‘Hill Top’, the house owned by famous children’s author, Beatrix Potter. Beatrix bought this house with the proceeds of her first book, Peter Rabbit, and donated it to the National Trust when she died. This unassuming cottage is left almost exactly as it was when Beatrix worked and lived in it – a testimony, perhaps to her attitude to the Lake District area in general. Keen to preserve the look of this landscape, as well as the original farming methods, Beatrix involved herself closely with the National Trust. Wanting to experience the modern charming countryside as well as get a feel of history I decided to explore in ‘Beatrix Potter’s footsteps’. So, using a guide book I set off on one of 15 simple trails. The trail took me through farmland and up a hill to ‘Moss Eccles Tarn’, a little mountain lake also owned by Beatrix Potter. As I crested a hill overlooking Esthwaite Water I misunderstood the map and veered off in completely the wrong direction. I wandered through forest, tramped through bogs, startled two deer and alarmed the grazing Herdwick sheep before finding the right path again. I was heartened to learn later that when Beatrix visited the neighbouring village of Hawkshead in 1882 she ‘had a series of adventures. Inquired the way three times, lost continually, ….. (and) chased once by cows.’ Seems I was in good company!

Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk for more information on the National Trust.

This article first appeared in the Umhlanga Globe newspaper in 2010.