Perfect, in Every Way

From StarMag 2006

Byline: Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE WHITE DARKNESS

By Geraldine McCaughrean

Publisher: Oxford University Press,

272 pages

(ISBN: 0-192-71983-1)

I HAVE been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now – which is ridiculous, since he's been dead for 90 years."

The reader gets a pretty clear idea what Symone, heroine of The White Darkness, is like from the first line of Geraldine McCaughrean's latest (and, in my opinion, best thus far) novel.

Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates, one of the men on Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated 1911 expedition to the South Pole, is not usually the sort of bloke 14-year-olds obsess about. but Symone, shy, sensitive and romantic, has neither the vocabulary nor the stomach for the preoccupations of the average 21st century adolescent. While her classmates discuss snogging and boys, she dreams about glaciers and snow storms and Oates.

Oates, who said, "I am just going outside and may be some time," and crawled out of his tent, never to be seen again, may be long dead, but to Symone, he is very real and her only comfort.

Oates is portrayed as attractive and gentle, with a wry sense of humour and the gift of saying just the right thing at the right time. It's easy to forget that he's a figment of Sym's imagination, so naturally does he fit into her life and on the page. It's as if she's conjured flesh and blood (and spirit – most definitely spirit) out of legend! (Well, in anycase, McCaughrean certainly has.)

This is a gift many teenagers possess – staring posters of their movie and pop idols into life, living life inside a book or, more accurately in this day and age, a music video or graphic novel.

It is Symone's "uncle" Victor, business partner of her dead father, and a sort of slightly dodgy fairy godfather and mentor, who first fills her head with chilly imaginings, buying her books about The Ice (lingo for the Antartic) and the North Pole; penguins, seals and boreales; Scott and Oates.

Uncle Victor plans a family trip to Paris, but at the last minute, Sym's mother's passport mysteriously vanishes. It turns up again, in Victor's coat pocket, once he and Sym are safely in the French capital. But before she can confront him with her suspicions, he announces that they will be going on an Antartic expedition of their own! Sym is so thrilled at the prospect that she registers, but doesn't quite manage to react to the uncanny sight of Victor chewing the SIM card of his mobile phone!

The pace, never slack in the first place, picks up even more from then on. Victor, it appears, has signed up for a package tour of sorts with a travel company called Pengwings. Among their travelling companions is a film producer, Manfred Bruch, and his hunky son, Sigurd, who proves to be quite a distraction for Symone (welcome or not, she can't quite decide).

The group journeys south, via Buenos Aires and Punta Arenas, and it's an adventure: Symone is surrounded by startling, colourful, ridiculous people, and stunning, long-wished-for, long-dreamt-of scenery. The excitement goes to her head like champagne, but thanks to Oates – ironic, practical, matter of fact, ever the voice of reason, offering her constant support, courage and inspiration – she never quite loses it.

And when things go wrong, when tragedy strikes and lives are threatened, it is Oates who saves Symone. Well, maybe it's her intense belief of his realness that pulls her through: the combination of facts read and memorised, the poetic licence of a television script, faded pictures, and her youthful, hopeful yearning for romance and passion creates a man whose love saves her in the nick of time.

When Symone looks back on her narrow escape, she is struck by the possibility that Oates was not simply a figment of her imagination. Something happened that cannot be explained away as wishful thinking or an active imagination. At this point in the story, the reader will experience chills – and it won't be for the first time.

The White Darkness is full of spine-tingling, breath-taking moments, thanks to the exciting, emotionally-engaging plot, McCaughrean's intoxicating, sparkling and magical way with words, and her heart-stopping portrayal of Captain Oates.

And of course, there's Symone, the most sympathetic, heart-breaking heroine since George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke. McCaughrean's description of Symone's interior world is beautiful and painful. It's the best thing about the book and that's saying a lot as there isn't a single superfluous sentence in what I think is the most perfect book to be published this year.

Between Angst and Boredom

From StarMag, 2nd July 2006
Byline: Review by DAPHNE LEE

ENDYMION SPRING

By Matthew Skelton

Publisher: Puffin Books, 352 pages

(ISBN: 0-141-32035-4)

WHILE browsing the shelves in an Oxford University college library, 12-year-old Blake Winters is “bitten” by a book. It is an old volume, with an unusual silver clasp shaped like a snake’s fang – it draws blood! Etched on the cracked leather cover is the name Endymion Spring, but inside, the book is completely blank.

However, as Blake gazes at its finely-veined pages, a verse appears on the paper before him. Intrigued, he decides to find out all he can about the book and soon realises that there are others who are also interested in it and who will stop at nothing to possess it.

Just who or what is Endymion Spring?

Well, in the beginning of the book, we learn that it is the name of a boy who lived in 15th century Germany and was apprentice to Johannes Gutenberg, the man credited with inventing moveable type. In this book Skelton suggests that it is Gutenberg’s patron, Johann Fust, who inspired the story of Faust, the man who sold his soul to the devil.

Historically, Fust sued Gutenberg, effectively bankrupting him. Opinions vary as to whether Fust’s actions were justified. Skelton simply adds supernatural elements to the bare facts, turning Fust into a power-hungry tyrant who has stumbled upon a book that contains the secrets of the universe. Trouble is, not only does the book choose to whom it wants to reveal these secrets, without the blood of a child to feed on, its pages will remain blank.

Endymion Spring unwittingly causes writing to appear in the book and hundreds of years later, Blake finds himself in the same powerful and dangerous position. At first the book is a welcome distraction: His parents aren’t getting on and his mother, an American academic, has “escaped” to Oxford (with Blake and sister, Duck, in tow) to do some research. Blake misses his dad and is angry as hell and bored to tears.

Blake’s first encounter with the book piques the reader’s interest, no thanks to the cheesy bit of doggerel that magically appears on one of its pages. But once he starts actively looking for clues, the whole exercise starts reading and feeling like a chore. Maybe it's because the reader is never ever convinced of Blake’s interest in the book. He’s intrigued, yes, but he’s snooping mainly out of boredom and, partly, to spite his mum.

The subplot, which deals with Blake’s relationship with his mother and the way he copes with separation from his father, is really quite tedious. Did Skelton decide that his hero needed to deal with some personal crisis to make him more believable and sympathetic? The way Blake handles his family problems simply makes him look like a resentful, unreasonable kid who has no intention of trying to understand what’s going on with his parents.

This is probably an accurate portrayal of a typical tween stuck in a place like Oxford University (“What? You mean the Bodleian doesn’t have a Playstation?!”), but it left me really disliking the brat. After all, children’s fiction is full of bratty individuals (Lyra Silvertongue for choice) who still manage to inspire affection and admiration. Not Blake though. His sister, Duck, is even more annoying, and most of the adult characters, who appear in the present-day parts of the book, are no better.

In fact, halfway through Endymion Spring I found myself thinking, “If only Skelton had stayed put in the 15th century.” The story of how the book comes to be and Endymion Spring’s escape from Fust is much more compelling than Blake’s adventures.

Certainly, Fust is a considerably more convincing (even fascinating) villain than the character who is finally revealed as Blake’s arch nemesis. Her transformation from merely slightly sinister to downright devilish is so abrupt and extreme that she might as well have been given cloven hooves, horns and a pitchfork.

By the time Blake’s quest comes to a contrived and hurried end, I was no longer interested in the lad. However, I did want to know more about young Endymion. What secrets did the dragon skin reveal to him and how did he resist the temptation to use the knowledge selfishly? Skelton needs to write another book and, this time, focus on the right boy.