The marsh of time
Innocence, youth, the potency of landscape, the immanence of something wondrous and animals as emblems: these motifs from War Horse and subsequent stories by former Children's Laureate and Olympian of the kids' writing world Michael Morpurgo reappear in this lyrical, rhapsodic narrative. It's a novel for 9-14-year-olds; it's also for readers many times that age.
A teenage protagonist on a gap year in the 1980s, “following the bend in the road”, comes to France's Camargue, home to the wild horses and also to thousands of pink flamingos, who nest across its wind-slammed salt marshes.
He collapses with fever and is nursed by a couple living nearby. As he recovers, Kezia starts telling him of another boy in the marshes, 40 years ago. The boy is her “meilleur ami” and partner Lorenzo, almost wordless, autistic, brimming with understanding and insistent on truth. Renzo patrols the gauntly beautiful mudflats and rivers, comprehending the whole being of the flamingos and other creatures, healing and saving them.
Four decades earlier, Romany girl and nearly mute boy are already friends when the Germans enter their area of Vichy France. At first, the invaders are just a nuisance, a novelty almost. But menace builds. A kind Jewish teacher is taken; the Vichy police circle and inquire.
Renzo's family hides Kezia and her parents. In a typically Morpurgo inversion of stereotypes, a German sergeant realises what is happening and chooses to protect rather than persecute. But as an Allied invasion looms, the enemy and their collaborators grow fearful and savage.
Morpurgo never glosses over the adult world's bigotry and treachery, or the pack cruelty of children. But reconciliation is always possible; friendship and love help to heal. It all helps bring the positive, supportive tone that matters so much to young readers. And, let's face it, to many others of us.
This is much more than a feel-good story. It's a feel-right story as well. Characters chime true, no matter how many legs they move on. Renzo is an astonishing creation: invincible yet fragile; transparent yet labyrinthine. It's affecting to hear of the connection with one of the author's own grandkids.
A book that stays with you days after you close it.