This novel from Geoffrey Lewis, his first to be set on the canals which he knows
so well, marked a complete and radical departure from the popular detective stories
for which he is known. Some elements of the style will, however, be familiar to his
growing band of readers, in particular his ability to fire the emotions with a few
well-chosen words.
Starlight is a short and deceptively simple story, making use of the author’s deep
familiarity with the world of the canals:
Harry Turner is eleven years old, and his
world is about to be turned upside-down. His parents are moving, leaving the only
home he’s known, to live in a tiny village near the Oxford Canal. Uprooted from school
and friends, he despairs of finding any agreeable company in his new home – until
he meets Jake Woodrow, the son of the local lock-keeper. From shaky beginnings,
their friendship develops rapidly through the long, hot summer of 1955 into a deep,
strong bond – a bond whose strength is to be tested in spectacular fashion. The drama
and tension of two young boys, each seeking for friendship in spite of their widely
differing backgrounds and circumstances, takes place against a backdrop of carefully-
researched factual events; and real characters, working boatmen of the time, add
a spice of authenticity to Geoffrey Lewis’ tale.
The mood ranges from heartwarming
humour to unbearable poignancy as he leads the reader through that heat-wave, as
it was seen by a young schoolboy in the idyllic setting of an Oxfordshire village.
Starlight reverses the balance of the David Russell stories: Told in the first person
by Harry himself, it is the adults who are the secondary characters.
His father is
the owner of an engineering company, with a factory in the town of Kidlington, just
north of Oxford itself; his mother has no need to work. Harry is the only child;
comfortable perhaps rather than really wealthy, his lifestyle, the surroundings he
takes for granted are in dramatic contrast to those of Jake. Son of the poorly-paid
canal employee, an ex-boatman who has lost an arm in a boating accident, their way
of life is basic in the extreme, partly because the lock cottage has no gas or electricity,
nor any road access. Shunned by his classmates as a ‘dirty boatee’, his response
to Harry is at first very wary, while Harry, as the unknown ‘new boy’, senses a kindred
spirit in the apparently self-reliant loner. As their friendship grows, each shows
his strengths and vulnerabilities, until they are virtually inseparable.
But then,
tragedy strikes…
STARLIGHT sample chapter:
"Perhaps it was blind chance, that led me
back to live in the place of my childhood’s greatest happiness, and its greatest
sorrow. But, although I am not a religious man, I do believe that there is some kind
of outside influence, a power which can and does guide our faltering steps through
the journey of life: So – was it chance, or destiny, which led me to make that rare
visit to the village, to that meeting outside the long-closed post office with old
Mabel Caddick? I remember her as an energetic, cheerful housewife in her thirties;
she’s over eighty, now. In the course of conversation, she asked, did I know that
the old lock cottage was up for sale? I hadn’t known – but I made it my business
to find out, to contact the agent for the details; and to persuade Mary that this
really was the place where we wanted to live, now that Sarah, our youngest, was ready
to fly the nest.
We got it at a good price, too. Houses in the middle of nowhere,
still more than a mile from the nearest vestiges of civilisation, probably aren’t
too easy to sell, even if one of the previous owners had laid in a proper crushed-stone
roadway, and converted the larger of Ernie Woodrow’s old store sheds into a two-car
garage. Not that I need two cars now, of course, not since my Mary’s been gone. We
had almost six years here, together. The children keep on at me to move, to go and
live with one of them, or at least to buy myself a little place somewhere else –
they’re afraid the memories will get to me, I suppose, the thought of her short,
hard struggle against that final illness; or the being alone here, where we’d had
so many happy times in those last years. But I still love it here; I like to meet,
chat with, the people who come through the lock – all holiday-makers, now, of course.
The likes of old Joe Skinner, Frank Shine, Albert Beechey and the rest are long gone.
And sometimes, of an evening, I let the starlight on the still water take me back
to those days of my childhood…"
Availability:
‘Starlight’ was published in September 2005 at a cover price of £6.99. Copies can
be ordered through any good bookshop by quoting the title and author or ISBN 0-9545624-5-3,
or direct from this website.
Trade orders may be placed through any wholesaler via Bookdata, or contact the publishers
at sales@sgmpublishing.co.uk
From the press:
‘Compulsive Reading’ - Roger Wickham
‘A Beautiful Tale, Beautifully Told’ - Amherst Publishing
‘I’m sending the bill for the box of tissues.’ - Pamela McManus
From reviews of the previous David Russell books:
‘Northamptonshire’s own answer to Inspector Morse’
Image Magazine
‘Impossible to put down’
Graham Sherwood, Choice Magazine
‘Plots brimming with unexpected twists’
What’s On Magazine
