The Reach of Children by Tim Lebbon
Jun. 20th, 2010 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Daniel is ten years old when his mother dies. She dies young, and with so much left to give. He does not understand. He cannot let her go.
After the funeral, his father begins talking to a large wooden box that suddenly appears beneath his bed. And when Daniel whispers to the box one day when his father goes out ... it answers back.
It’s a voice he does not know. But this voice knows so much.
Tim Lebbon’s novella moves and chills in turn, telling the story of Daniel, a ten year old boy whose mother dies after a long illness. Left alone with a distraught father who is slowly falling apart he tries to make sense of his own loss, only to one night overhear his father talking to a large wooden box that has suddenly appeared under his bed. Defying his father’s order not to enter his room, Daniel goes in one day and whispers to the box of his troubles. And the box answers back.
In an afterword to the book, Lebbon describes how the idea for this story came from the death of his own mother and that sense of loss is powerfully depicted in this novella to moving effect. At the same time it is an effective horror story with an effective sense of creeping dread that oozes off the page as Daniel is drawn to the box and discovers how its contents may link to a terrible event in his father’s past.
It’s a sparsely written story, the economy of words only adding to the depth of Daniel’s loneliness and his attempt to come to terms with what has happened. His perspective is spot on and pitch perfect – never patronising but equally never too wise for his years. Equally, the decline of Daniel’s father is sensitively depicted and the inability of father and son to grieve together tugs at the heart strings.
My only complaint is that the resolution of the supernatural element is perhaps too quick and given the slow burn build up, the pay-off too rushed (although I think this is more due to the constraints of the novella’s form than Lebbon’s writing skills). I also wasn’t quite convinced by the unveiling of what happened in the childhood of Daniel’s father as it seemed too lurid for the gentle wrongness that goes on before.
Saying all this, the novella is most definitely worth a look and it comes with a foreword by Michael Marshall Smith.
The Verdict:
There are aspects of this novella that didn’t quite work for me, but I still think that it’s worth a look. The sense of wrongness that increases in every page, coupled with the very real feeling of loss that pours from the characters make this a master class of writing and it’s for that reason that you should check it out.
Daniel is ten years old when his mother dies. She dies young, and with so much left to give. He does not understand. He cannot let her go.
After the funeral, his father begins talking to a large wooden box that suddenly appears beneath his bed. And when Daniel whispers to the box one day when his father goes out ... it answers back.
It’s a voice he does not know. But this voice knows so much.
Tim Lebbon’s novella moves and chills in turn, telling the story of Daniel, a ten year old boy whose mother dies after a long illness. Left alone with a distraught father who is slowly falling apart he tries to make sense of his own loss, only to one night overhear his father talking to a large wooden box that has suddenly appeared under his bed. Defying his father’s order not to enter his room, Daniel goes in one day and whispers to the box of his troubles. And the box answers back.
In an afterword to the book, Lebbon describes how the idea for this story came from the death of his own mother and that sense of loss is powerfully depicted in this novella to moving effect. At the same time it is an effective horror story with an effective sense of creeping dread that oozes off the page as Daniel is drawn to the box and discovers how its contents may link to a terrible event in his father’s past.
It’s a sparsely written story, the economy of words only adding to the depth of Daniel’s loneliness and his attempt to come to terms with what has happened. His perspective is spot on and pitch perfect – never patronising but equally never too wise for his years. Equally, the decline of Daniel’s father is sensitively depicted and the inability of father and son to grieve together tugs at the heart strings.
My only complaint is that the resolution of the supernatural element is perhaps too quick and given the slow burn build up, the pay-off too rushed (although I think this is more due to the constraints of the novella’s form than Lebbon’s writing skills). I also wasn’t quite convinced by the unveiling of what happened in the childhood of Daniel’s father as it seemed too lurid for the gentle wrongness that goes on before.
Saying all this, the novella is most definitely worth a look and it comes with a foreword by Michael Marshall Smith.
The Verdict:
There are aspects of this novella that didn’t quite work for me, but I still think that it’s worth a look. The sense of wrongness that increases in every page, coupled with the very real feeling of loss that pours from the characters make this a master class of writing and it’s for that reason that you should check it out.
