Reviews of The Pink House

This trilogy is a bright and cheerful antidote to cares and woes.

Or is it?

On the face of it we have a romp through the holidays of a bunch of blameless and hopeful children. There is no commentary on their doings or their fates. We curious flies perch on the wall peering away at the entertainment.

The trick is that right from the start the writer (or is it the reader?) creates a frisson of peril in a world of sunny days. I couldn't identify where it was that I began to fret or indeed which of the characters or situations I most fretted about. Certainly these books are Rorschach ink blots for troubled souls.

Or maybe not ink blots but drops of rain on a still pond? I felt subtly manipulated but there are no Dickensian bleeding hearts or a narrator pointing out revealing connections between you the reader and what is going on. The entire plot is delivered through conversation and event. Cleverly done.

As for the mood the word 'elegiac' is over-used and I have added one more instance right here. I considered its appropriateness for a while and concluded that a better word is 'saudade' (I am keen on Fado - check it out). I found myself swept away by nostalgia and wistful loss for a childhood I never had.

Furthermore I found my mind playing over music such as Butterworth's 'Shropshire Lad' or Vaughan Williams' 'Lark Ascending' as I read. These musical responses have remained with me long after I finished the books.

What else? The author creates a convincing sense of place. The descriptions of the landscapes are superb and so filmic I really believe I have visited the locations. The passage of time is skilfully handled and the pace is considered. Things happen just when you need them to and last exactly the right amount of time before moving on. The passages in which the children experience peril (and yes, they do, so some of my worry was warranted) are enthralling and draw you in inexorably.

Read this trilogy if are intrigued by the subjective experience of childhood revisited when an adult, you are interested in authorial techniques, you enjoyed adventure stories when you were young, or you love the landscape.
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This is the third book from a series of books by the author Alan Kennedy ("The Boat in the Bay" and "The Broken Bell"). The children are growing up fast, each finding their own individualities and trying to come to terms with the persons they are becoming to be. The book mainly focuses on one character, Poppy, who discovers how following her heart and desires for painting can be a lonely path to take, yet it is something she cannot fight back. The other children are also faced with emotions that they have never experienced before, which is inevitably a major part of growing up and finding out who you really are.

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This book deserves to be much better known, for it belongs in the top division of children's literature. Gone is most of the ponderous thinking and over-the-top angst of the characters in the earlier books, finally freeing them up to feel real. The story flows along too without every point being repeated several times to make sure you've got it, and there is also little to complain about in the way of faults. The plot is highly intelligent and creative, building up towards a dangerous situation in which what happens feels entirely credible, and just when you think it's reached its heights, it jumps up to another level. It's absolutely gripping, and the epicentre of the key action is one of the creepiest places you're likely to find in any book that attempts to stick to strict realism. Tied in with the action is another story thread which has been weaved in with it beautifully, adding to the significance of it all and ramping up the emotional impact of what happens. Once the main action is over and the book is moving towards its end, rather than the door being slammed firmly shut in the reader's face in the way that happens too often in literature, we are allowed to stay on to enjoy what happens next, but then of course there's another story thread that needs to be completed. It's all perfectly paced.

There's something special that amplifies the value of this book substantially, and that's the painting. I wasn't expecting it to work, not least because some of the pictures illustrating the books don't quite hit the mark (although others are fine), but the writer does know his stuff, and he allows us to see inside the head of Poppy (one of the main characters) as she sets out on her journey to become an artist. I'd like to see a lot more of this, and it occurs to me that it would be a very good way to teach art to children - this book will doubtless inspire any children who read it and make them want to have a proper go at painting, but it won't actually take them very far, so perhaps there's a place for a more extensive exploration of Poppy's thoughts as she learns to draw and paint, accompanied by a multitude of little examples of her work with sketches and bits of paintings to demonstrate techniques which the reader can copy, all of it built into a story like this one. But as it is, this is already a great start, and I might even head for the art shop myself.

So in short, this is a super book - don't miss out.

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A powerful and captivating novel.  I was compelled to read the second half in a sitting and such are its haunting depths that I already want to read it again. Julian Lovelock, Mixed Moss.

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 This trilogy just got better and better: I enjoyed The Boat in the Bay especially the Swallows and Amazons allusions. The series became more interesting though as the characters took on their own lives when the action moved to France in The Broken Bell. But The Pink House is special, the setting and its atmosphere beautifully described as Uncle Albert’s past is poignantly revealed.