by Joan Aiken
Tales of London Town is a beautifully presented set of linked short novellas for children by Joan Aiken, one of my all-time favourite authors. She’s probably best known for her epic fantasy adventure series, the Wolves Chronicles, featuring The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. She also wrote a wide range of hugely entertaining fiction for children and adults.
As a fan, I found this collection a real treat, featuring as it does pretty much all the things I love about Aiken’s writing. It’s funny, imaginative, believable, features literary references, and is often genuinely scary with a strong gothic influence. Fans of her Arabel and Mortimer series for younger children will recognise the Rumbury Town location, and there is even a cameo from Arabel’s dad Mr Jones.
But you don’t need to have read Joan Aiken before to enjoy this joyful and transporting collection. It would be a good way in to her work for both children and adults. I was lucky enough to attend a centenary event for Aiken’s birth and to hear her daughter Lizza read from the start of one of the novellas. “I am now going to tell you about how a lost football team came to be connected with the seven thoughtful magpies of Rumbury Cemetery, and what that had to do with John Sculpin’s fondness for Carpathian Puff Pastry, and his mother’s for auction sales, and how his cousin Sue and her pet carp came into the business, not to mention the ferocious Count Gradko and a cloud shaped like a polar bear. So pay attention and listen”. The audience hung on every word. The seven influential magpies featured in the story have been added to my ongoing list of great corvids in literature. (These include: Mortimer, Aiken’s naughty raven, immortalised by Quentin Blake; the Magenpies, Gerald Durrell’s childhood magpies; and Grip the raven from Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge).
Tales of London Town is entrancingly illustrated by Annabel Pearl, and is in a gorgeous hardback edition from the small publisher Manderley Press. I have read some of their previous re-publications of works with strong links to places (my favourite other than this one has been Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Armourer’s House, in which Tudor London leaps off the page).
For anyone who comes new to Joan Aiken’s work, I can only say that I am envious – you have so many treats in store. For adult readers of romance, I recommend her Jane Austen entertainment Lady Catherine’s Necklace. Finally, the fearsome Lady Catherine de Bourgh gets a challenge worthy of her, when she awakens to find herself kidnapped and locked in a room with an unconscious stranger. The sea is flooding in, and threatens to drown them both…
(Review by Bethan)