Regatta by Libby Purves reviewed by Julia Jones

May was a merry month for new books and book reviews. I had been writing for the Bookbag site (unpaid but congenial and another way to feed one's habit) and was somewhat delighted to discover that three books I'd reviewed were all being published on the same day. They were This Is Not A Love Story by Keren David, Liberty's Fire by Lydia Syson and The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards. I also reviewed A War of Flowers by Jane Thynne and The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr. All admirable and enjoyable and highly recommended. If there'd been a maypole handy I'd have gone skipping round it, plaiting many-coloured ribbands. Many books good: more books better. 

However, when a friend insisted that I should read Regatta by Libby Purves, my heart plummeted. I'd just completed a new sailing adventure novel and was feeling thoroughly insecure The central character is a black girl in a competitively white world -- just as in Regatta. I had wanted feedback on my story but the one thing that I definitely didn't want to hear was that it had  been “done” already – particularly by someone as good as Libby Purves. One Summer's Grace, her non-fiction account of a circumnavigation of Great Britain with her 3 and 5 year old children is a modern classic of sailing literature.

Regatta is fiction. It's set in a Suffolk coastal town named Blythney – a thinly disguised version of Aldeburgh – except that the disguise is so thin that it's less than invisible. The peculiar intensification of life and relationships that takes over the Yacht Club set during the regatta month of August is so skilfully observed that it becomes almost more real than the actual. The yummy mummies and the teen drinkers, the businessmen who have swapped their suits for baggy shorts and buffoonery, the racing hearties and the competitive picnic-makers are all there – as they appear to have been from generation unto generation. Then, into this festival of class-based bonhomie, comes a thin black child with a twisted foot and a self-defensive attitude that slips quickly to aggression. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to read it.

Anansi is the unloved child of a drug-dealing mother and an absent father. Her lameness is the result of a deliberately -inflicted injury compounded by neglect. She has been sent to Blythney by a Country Holidays Organisation in order to benefit from the fresh air and organised activity. There's an 'anyone-for-tennis' moment early on when even her relentlessly jolly hostess realises the complete impossibility of Anansi joining in. The novel constantly questions the wisdom, the efficacy – even the kindness – of such summer holiday up-rootings of inner city children while simultaneously allowing full recognition of the genuinely good heart and decency of the Blythney hostess who is struggling to help. It would have been so easy for Regatta to be angry caricature all round.

Casual unkindness provokes Anansi into announcing who she has seen doing what to whom, up against the wall in the damp Martello tower. She consciously intends it as a bomb but has not realised “how long, how slow, how messy and unsatisfying a carnage she had wrought.” Regatta is a novel for adults which is about children – rather than a book for children themselves and the adult mix of shock and comedy is finely observed as the high tide squashes everyone together on the picnic beach as they fail to escape what has been said. The emotional sympathy flows towards the adulterer's two unattractive teenage sons. One blushes dull red and turns away: the other is pale and pinched, staring into space.

No-one is without fault and for most there is a measure of redemption and relief. Choices and relationships are central – as they would be in any novel but the element that made Regatta outstanding for me – even among such an abundance of reading pleasure – was the portrayal of the river. It's a major catalyst for personality development change as young Anansi learns to sail and individual Blythney children make crucial decisions whether to treat it with respect. They've been protected by safety boats, allowed to treat it as a playground and some have come close to forgetting that it remains an alien element. Human error and the harsh environment precipitate a tense and terrifying crisis with no more props needed than some soft mud, a grounded dinghy and a few strategic planks.

Harry, the old man who has been the first to notice the potential of Anansi, views the river differently. He is knowledgeable, experienced and expert but he is also alive to its beauty and spirituality. “On a morning like this, no problem was insoluble, no grief inconsolable. His eyes misted a little: beyond this view, this dawn and this river, there hung some intangible, enormous truth and illimitable goodness.”  

My eyes misted a bit at this point. I wouldn't really claim that I am reviewing Regatta. It's not a new book (though it is available on Kindle) and my copy has the melancholy rubber stamp WITHDRAWN FROM SWINDON PUBLIC LIBRARIES –  I am simply using this space to say that all the books I've read this month are good, but this, for me,  is special.

Regatta is available as a Kindle ebook

The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr reviewed by Julia Jones

It’s the winter of 1941 and we are in the Ukraine. A fourteen year old girl is hiding in a wood on the vast and bitter-cold steppe. Her name is Katinka, a name from folk song and fairy tale, and she has been befriended by two of the wild Przelowski’s horses.

The name of the place is Askania-Nova, a nature reserve founded by the rich and kindly German Baron Falz-Fein. The Baron and his family have been driven out by the Bolsheviks but are still remembered with deep affection by the ancient Ukrainian curator Maxim Borisovich. Stalin’s policies have starved the countryside and Max has endured torture at the hands of the state police as well as the loss of his wife. Now he lives alone in his tiny cottage with only the giant wolfhound Taras for company.

By the winter of 1941 the Nazis have invaded Russia and Askania-Nova has been occupied by the SS. When their Commandant, Captain Grenzemann, a former Olympic horseman, sees the wild horses he concludes that they are a sub-equine species, a wandering Gypsy breed who must be completely eradicated in case they should mate with his cherished Hanoverians. They are also potentially meat and his men are hungry.

Almost everyone is hungry in this story, though Grenzemann and his men eat better than most. The Winter Horses is a marvellous blend of the historical situation of the suffering Russian countryside (Askania-Nova did and does exist) and the quasi-magical relationship that exists between Katinka and the Przelowski horses, Temüjin and Börte. They can speak to one another without words, an extension of the everyday understanding between people and animals that I found easy to accept in context, and extremely satisfying to read.

Things happen that are truly horrible – already at the beginning of the story Katinka has seen so much that she has lost the power to cry. Yet there are also unexpected moments of kindness – the old man Max and his wolf-hound Taras are unstintingly generous to Katinka and the horses – and the story insists that there are good and bad people on either side and that even the worst people have the potential to have been different. Nevertheless Katinka feels compelled to apologise to her animal companions for the appalling behaviour of most of the humans that they meet. If God lived on earth, she says, she’d go and smash his windows.

The Winter Horses is an exciting tale of adventure and (sometimes preposterous) escapes. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be passing it on to my adult daughter as well as recommending it for teens and for those confident readers who have the emotional stability to get through the brief, carefully-written scenes of slaughter. Philip Kerr has managed something rather remarkable in siting his story in a space where history and legend can co-exist without either diminishing the truth of the other. He says it rather better than I do. And yet if today you were in the Ukraine and dared to put your ear into the wind or perhaps took a trip across the steppes and listened to the deep voices of the bison, the whoop of the cranes and the laughter of the Przewalski's horses, you might learn[...]that even if there are some parts of this story that are not exactly true, they could be, and that is more important.

I loved this novel - and if it's too late for the Christmas list, go on - treat yourself.

(This review was first published on The Bookbag website)