Goodnight Mister Tom and other set texts
This post is part of a series revisiting my favourite childhood reads.
Imagine having to sit down and dissect Magorian’s ‘use of language’ instead of immersing yourself in a story in which a small, abused and loveless boy and an old, bereaved and bitter man gradually start to heal each other.
So writes Lucy Mangan in ‘Bookworm. A memoir of childhood reading.’ I take her point, the best books can be become a chore when encountered as a set text. It’s striking though that the example she uses, Michelle Magorian’s 1981 debut ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’, is the first book I really remember studying at school. I would have been about 12 and the book not only survived but was made richer by the experience. I was a quick reader, even at that age, and it may have been that it was being forced to slow down and savour a book that I might otherwise have rushed through that did the work, or it may have been the questions asked that sparked new thoughts.
It’s been a long time since I reread ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ and it has sat patiently on my bookshelf waiting for me to return. It’s the story of a young evacuee, William Beech, and the old man, Tom Oakley, who (somewhat reluctantly) takes him in. Over the course of the book a touching friendship develops, William flourishes and Tom discovers what it is to love again.
I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the book, it’s a beautiful evocation of friendship as William finds not only a father figure but friends of his own age and a whole village community. There’s plenty of period detail in the way the evacuees experience the countryside – both the idyllic (blackberry picking, harvest, swallows and picnics) and the challenges (overcrowded schools, children being used as cheap farm labour). When William briefly and tragically returns to his mother in London, we see the impact of the Blitz on the capital. It’s not always an easy read as the quote at the top of this piece shows, mental illness, suicide, child and infant death, and child abuse are all part of the story but they are deftly and sensitively handled. Grief is a significant theme – Tom’s for his wife and son, William’s for those he loses along the way. The healing comes through time, friendship and art.
The chapter where William, Zach and Tom spend a fortnight by the sea is an utterly joyful evocation of a seaside holiday:
He could sit by the quay and sketch to his heart’s content and there was so much to see, new shapes to draw, new colours to store in his memory. There were some things, though, that he could never capture, things like smells and feelings and sensations of touch. They were ‘now’ things to enjoy only for a moment.
Magorian skillfully allows the odd hint of war to seep in, reminding readers of the wider backdrop to the story.
By the end of the book, William has grown up. He’s found his way through his grief at the loss of his friend. He can see that Tom is ageing, whilst he is getting stronger. He’s accepted for who he is and found a role for himself in Little Weirwold. ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ sure-footedly guides young readers through some serious subjects and emotions, taking them to a satisfying ending.
After ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ there’s a gap in my memory when it comes to which books I studied at school and it’s my GCSE and A-level set texts that next made an impression. I’ve got some of the titles on my shelves now, proof of the lasting impact some of these books made.
GCSE
Animal Farm – George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare
‘The Merchant of Venice’ was the first Shakespeare play I saw performed on stage, a touring production at the Bradford Alhambra in my GCSE year. I’m sure I’m not alone in this being a formative experience – opening up Shakespeare’s words and stories in the medium they were intended for.
I confess I was rather less enthused by ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, which did feel like a bit of a slog in the classroom, by contrast I enjoyed unlocking the allegory in ‘Animal Farm’ and connecting the history being satirised with my GCSE History syllabus which covered some of the same material.
A-level
Paradise Lost (Books I & II) – John Milton
Collected Poems – U.A. Fanthorpe
Dubliners – James Joyce
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Ghosts – Henrik Ibsen
The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
Richard II / The Tempest / Othello – William Shakespeare
My reaction to my A-level set texts is where I suspect I prove that I was not an entirely normal teenager! I loathed ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ with a passion – to the point where I still haven’t revisited it or watched the hugely popular television series. This isn’t out of character, I still avoid dystopian fiction and my preferred genre is the detective story where order is always restored to the world in the novel.
While most of my class were enjoying Margaret Atwood’s classic, I was falling in love with ‘Paradise Lost’. I enjoyed unpacking the poem line by line and finding the magic in the language. Milton’s Biblical epic tells the story of Adam and Eve, and Satan. Book II ends with Satan leaving Hell bound for the newly created world. Where Milton was rich and complicated, U.A. Fanthorpe seemed clear and familiar. I loved her poetry too. I particularly liked the poems that dealt with place, history and archaeology; as well as the way that she drew on everyday life. Fanthorpe was a Quaker and her Christian faith informed much of her poetry. BC:AD remains one of my favourite Christmas poems:
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.
If the big win was poetry, then James Joyce’s short story collection ‘Dubliners’ came not far behind. It didn’t turn me into a huge James Joyce fan but ‘Dubliners’ showed me what short stories can do, how much they can pack into a small space, and how powerful they can be. They also brought turn of the century Dublin to life. I was drawn to the quietness of them.
‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is many things, but quiet isn’t one of them. We saw two productions of the play, one at Bradford Alhambra and one at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. My memory is that one was much better than the other, but other than that I can’t remember much about them. Oscar Wilde’s work is fairly indestructible but there is something about comedy that makes analysing how it works fairly deathly and I didn’t particularity enjoy studying it. ‘Ghosts’ was better but it took seeing ‘A Doll’s House’ on stage in 2013 (with Hattie Morahan as Nora) before I worked up some actual enthusiasm for Ibsen. None of the Shakespeare plays we studied were touring in West Yorkshire at the time so we were left with film versions of Othello and not much else. Of the three, I preferred Richard II and still love the History plays today.
Looking back over the books mentioned here, I think I was lucky with the poetry choices my teachers made, the theatre trips they organised and the range of material offered up. I didn’t like everything, but that’s only to be expected. Most importantly, I can see where doors were opened into new worlds – for instance into the thoughts of a deposed king or the life of a frightened evacuee.