Excellent, engaging and why I (we) read. Five stars for now, not less than 4. Only lagged at one point and brought it home wonderfully. ( )

This is a book I re-read every few years. It was first published in 1987. I am going to try to explain why I keep coming back to it.

Initially all I can say is that this is not a comfortable book to read. If you know this author's works from his Duncton Wood books you might recognise some of the themes of darkness and suffering but here they are not filtered through a fantasy about moles. This is a graphic portrayal of life as a handicapped person and how attitudes and treatment change. I have never been able to adequately explain why I think that this is a brilliant book and I am sure that many people will find it incredibly disturbing. Reading a story that shows some of the ways the handicapped were treated, from the old Victorian institutions to the modern day, is a very distressing thing to read and then I think how much worse it would have been to live through.

In part one we are introduced to three characters: two with cerebral palsy — Arthur a seven year old boy sent to an asylum in 1927 and Esther a girl born in the 1960’s; the third is a nameless narrator sometime in the early 21st century. The connection is the Skallagrigg. What is the Skallagrigg? The computer game the narrator played or a character in the stories that Esther is told or a figment of Arthur’s imagination?

After we are introduced to these characters the narrator, who has played the computer game “Skallagrigg”, starts to research the programmer's life. He is given some computer discs that contain Esther’s life in her own words and the stories she has collected about Skallagrigg which were her inspiration in creating the game. These documents are used as part of the text of this novel as though it is a biography. In some ways I think that the structure of the book means that it shouldn’t work. The form is very “tell”.

But I think we as readers need the distance that the format introduces. We have been introduced to two children with the same physical limitation; both desperate to find a way to communicate. The stories of Arthur and the Skallagrigg relate some incidents so graphic about the abuse that went on in the institutions and the frustration of Esther’s desire to communicate is so painful.

Esther is lucky — she is born at a time when it is recognised that being physically disabled doesn’t automatically mean mentally disabled. She is clever and she goes to a school where she is challenged to learn. Additionally her father’s business selling and developing computers for the business world means that he is involved with people who see the possibilities; this leads to the development of an easier way for Esther and others like her to use computers. This is a way for her to be creative and for the stories to be told.

So what brings me back to this book? I think that the simplest explanation is that I find that the themes of hope and belief; the power of love and faith and friendship worth the struggle. ( )

Howard??