I was planning to write about something else this month, but you know how it is. I was going through the bookshelves looking for a book I'd thought I'd recognise by it's blue spine (when I found it, it was orange that's why I had to look all over the house for it) when I found my dog eared old copy of Isaac Campion by Janni Howker.I stopped, flicked through it and an hour or so later got up, scratchy throated from holding back the tears and totally emotionally floored.
What a gem this little book is. Published in 1986 it's written - like True Grit - in the voice of an elderly person relating his childhood. It didn't win the Carnegie but I think it's one of the finest historical novels written for young people I have ever read.
Isaac Campion's story takes place in his childhood, only as far back as the early twentieth century but a complete and other world. A world where children - according to Isaac only invented after the Great War -'are merely a damn nuisance and a mouth to feed until you could do a day's work..'
The world evoked is one of hardscrabble horse dealers, of the cruelty of men and the casual awfulness of death. This short book is, and for once this is not a cliche, coruscating in it's brilliance, it's utter simplicity and it's heat seeking narrative.
Sometimes I forget what a brilliant writer Janni Howker is. I am now going to make sure I read everything by her all over again this summer. I can't think of a better use of anybody's time.
