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Gekko brought up The Borribles books in the "Is there any good fantasy anywhere" thread and I thought the merited a thread of their own:
As people have mentioned at least one young adult book, I'd like to put in a recommendation for the Borribles trilogy. In fact, I can't recommend these books enough. They're set in 1970s industrial London, with the heroes being feral, street-wise children who "grew up wrong", ran away from home and changed into Borribles.
The first story started as a parody of the childrens show The Wombles (transformed here into Rumbles), but the series really comes into it's own in after this. The author uses and perverts just about every children's fantasy archetype with the Borribles themselves being grunge Peter Pans. The mystical world that would normally be through a wardrobe is instead a mental world consisting of a complete defiance of all society's rules. The book even uses the common fantasy staple - the epic song, but again uses it within the authors own wonderfully seditions agenda:
Ben the Tramps Song
Wot’s the point of workin’ ‘ard?
Wot’s the good of gainin’ riches?
Money’s mean and banks are bitches;
Profit’s just a prison yard.
Sling yer ‘ook an’ sling it stealthy;
Gob some grub an’ swig some booze,
Find a place ter kip and snooze-
Now you’re ‘ealthy, wise an’ wealthy!
Let the world roll round an’ round,
Wiv its hard-worked folk in fetters:
All ‘oo think themselves yer betters,
Money-mad and dooty-bound.
Make yer choice, there ain’t so many,
No ambition’s worth a fart;
Freedom is a work of art-
Take yer stand with uncle Benny!
The books were withdrawn from many shops following the killing of a policeman during riots in the 80s - for a short time they were vilified by the press due to their moral ambiguity. They've finally come back into print though (I believe at the request of China Mieville) and should be easy to find in the collected edition – the author is Michael De Larrabeiti. I read them when I was about 11 and was breathtaken by the wonderful subversiveness of the series.
I read them again last year and wasn’t disappointed. Although I’ve aged, the books still seemed to stand up - especially in the blend of fantasy and industrial London which is handled superbly.
Sorry for the long post, but these books blew my mind when I was a kid and I tend to see them as required reading for all.
Following that post, I made a mental note to check out these books. Upon investigating my bookshelves, lo and behold, I found a copy of the first book, which I've been re-reading this weekend. I must've read it years ago, but have pretty much zero recall. I enjoyed it a great deal and found it very, very interesting for a number of reasons. A distant memory that came back for me when reading these books is the phrase "latchkey children", a phrase I no doubt heard back in the mists of time eating peas, chips and fishfingers in front of the telly while my parents watched Nationwide. It refered to children who pretty much looked after themselves from an early age, outside of the school system, neglected by their parents. It was one of those buzzwords that you'd hear a lot of for a couple of years. Michael de Larrabeiti seems to be extrapolating from this, and projecting a fantasy on the back of this - no wonder the books got him in trouble. (I'm sure it was all the usual tabloid scaremongering nonsense but it doesn't surprise me that it occured).
This is related to one aspect of the book that saddend me a great deal - the way it'd no longer "ring true" in that we don't have the living basis for his fantasy - there's been a huge decrease in children playing in the streets, largely due to hysteria about padeophilia, increasing concerns about truancy, and perhaps more pertinently, a massive increase in traffic. Children don't seem to have the same freedom of movement and ability to explore the city that they once had. I hope this isn't getting too "eh, when I were a lad" but it's definitly something that's changed. The erosion of children'a automony in relation ot their environments is dealt with in Colin Ward's "The Child in THe City" amongst other studies. Cycling campigner Meyer Hilllman recently characterised the conditons our children live in a being similar to prision - inside, under supervision, twnety four hours a day. This article looks at similar themes. Perhaps not quite a discussion for the books forum but worth noting nonetheless. Relates to my next point, I hope.
The second point about Borribles that stuck me was the degree to which they they aren't anything close to our nomative sacharrine and sentimental portrayals of childhood. This kind of dewy-eyed picture postcard image of childhood has always struck me as an idealised projection which, to my mind, is anything close to the close to the shitting, pissing, shouting little manaics that children can be. It was nice to see this expressed in The Borribles. I thought it might be interesting to explore what other fantasy or children's literature brings out the anarchic character of children,as exisitng beyond adult rules, and asking what does this say about childhood and the time/society in which this books were written. Soem obvious contenders would be "Swallows and Amazons" and the "Just William" books. We also have a very desexualised fantasy childhood beyond the rules in JM Barrrie's "Peter Pan". I suppose one of the qualties about The Borribles which I found gripping was the way in which these themes were brought out in a modern, urban setting, which led me to refelct on the concerns mentioned above. Has anyone else got any other contenders or comments? Also, if anyone else has read The Borribles I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Final point, perhaps veering off topic - Another aspect, not really explored in the book, that comes out when we're discussing children is a fascination with dirt, faeces and so on. The Borribles, in particlar, the Wendles of Wandsworth ( a war like tribe of Borribles who live in a sewer) reminded me of nothing so much as Charles Fourier's "Little Hordes" (I can't find a link summing up Fourier's slightly insane vision but will stick it here when I do). Just curious to know if if anyone is aware of this reflected to any degree in children's literature. |
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