Bookwitch

I quite enjoy the cheap first class train tickets you can buy for some train journeys. It makes me think how nice it’d be to have the kind of money that would allow first class travel at all times. And when I’ve got that far, I always think of the French revolution. I think of eating cake, and heads rolling, and that sort of thing.

Plenty of both in Sally Gardner’s The Red Necklace, which I finally read after hearing nothing but enthusiastic comments from her colleagues and others. It’s set right in the midst of the revolution, and brought me straight back to my childhood, when I lived off books and films of this kind. I’m glad to see the genre isn’t dead.

There’s much death in this story and a lot of brutality. Masses of blood, and a lot that smells bad. As she says in her background notes, Sally has studied many books on the subject, and it shows. I’m sure it’s both more violent than, and more realistic than, say The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Three Musketeers (yes I know; wrong period, right place, same feel), and it’s a great continuation of that type of tale.

The Red Necklace is a very romantic, old style story about a boy and a girl, wonderful friendships and an extremely bad baddie. It’s set in both Paris and London and has some colourful characters and interesting background in the theatre and also on gypsy life.

The physical book is beautiful, too. Lovely cover and attractive maps of Paris. Each chapter begins with a paragraph set in a different size and colour font, which adds to the pleasure of just looking at the book.

I sincerely hope this is a trend, with lots more of my childhood type books turning up. I’d almost forgotten how much I loved these kinds of stories, and I feel sorry for Offspring who so far have missed out on much in this genre. Time to force some more books, I reckon. Two weeks over Christmas might do it.