The Broken Bell
Book Description
"It won’t do. It’s no fun at all being explorers with somebody running about seeing you’re alright all the time. It spoils things. We’re not children … well, I suppose we are … but you know what I mean. It’s awful not knowing what it is they’re up to.”
It is 1929. When Uncle Albert arranges a surprise holiday for the children, he imagines he’s looking after them, after his own fashion. But things don’t always turn out quite the way you expect and before this story ends he is the one in need of looking after. In desperate need, in fact, with his life hanging on a thread and only the children to save him in a frantic race against time. The story leads to a dramatic climax on a remote island in unfriendly seas, cut off from the familiar world. And we learn how an idyllic holiday can go badly wrong.
The Broken Bell is the sequel to the author’s successful first novel, The Boat in the Bay and features the same characters. It is in part a book about coming to terms with foreign places and foreign ways; the pleasures and pains of exciting new discoveries and challenges. The book also asks a question: faced with the choice between risking your own life or saving the life of somebody else, what do you do?
This book also gives the reader the first real glimpse of Poppy as a painter, growing up and hardly aware of her own prodigious talent. She also has hard choices to make: struggling to make sense of the difference between the magic of art and everyday life with the other children.
The hero, however, is the youngest of them all. It is Ian who finally discovers the secret of the broken bell. He never completely understands what is going on, but he saves the day, nonetheless.
For readers of any age.
In the same series, The Pink House
Check some reviews.
The book is illustrated by the Scottish artist John Johnstone.
How to buy
The Broken Bell is available in the UK Kindle store.
A paperback edition is available from Amazon UK or from Lulu.
Visit Alan Kennedy's Amazon author page.