The best-selling author of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas has written a moving and magical second book for children.
10:58AM BST 19 Sep 2011 (The Telegraph)
Noah Barleywater Runs Away is John Boyne's first return visit to children's fiction since his remarkable debut novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a Holocaust 'fable' that became a best-seller.
Boyne's main character in Noah Barleywater Runs Away, now out in paperback, is again an eight-year-old and this story is subtitled "a fairytale" and contains subtle illustrations by fellow Irishman Oliver Jeffers.
Noah flees home and although the tale is 'fantastical' (there are talking apple trees, flying wooden birds and doors that switch places) the storyline allows Dubliner Boyne to play with language and put Noah in situations and hold conversations that lead a young boy, at the dawning of real contemplation, to ponder about life and loss.
Noah, unlike classic fairytale 'victims', has not been abandoned - he has decided to run away. As he speeds through a magic forest the author subverts a fairytale genre you can tell he loves.
"Noah licked his lips and looked at the window sills. In the books he had read, grown-ups often left pies and cakes there with steam rising out of their peaked pastry hats, just as ravenous boys like him could come along and steal them away. But no one seemed to be that stupid in the first village."
The dialogue is snappy and knowing. When Noah is told he is a boy who is a "menace to society" Noah thinks to himself "I've been called worse".
After meeting a droll, hungry donkey and a chatty Daschund, Noah finds a toy shop, where everything - including many puppets - are made from the wood of the magic tree outside.
In the shop, there is an argumentative Russian clock (tightly wound after talking politics) and doorbell that forgets to ring. The elderly mysterious owner tells Noah: "That might not even be you it was ringing for. It could be a customer from last year."
The old toymaker Poppa tells Noah his story, providing ample opportunity for Boyne to explore the absurd. The Old Man recalls a teacher, Mrs Shields, telling him that one classmate "used to be an Elephant - something to do with a series of wishes . . . he keeps trying to eat his lunch through his nose, which is terribly messy."
He tells Noah of his success as a champion runner, winning eight Olympic Gold medals including a solo one for the 4x400 metres relay "by passing myself the baton in a complicated manoeuvre that quickly passed into legend." The old toymaker warns the boy: "There are worse things in life than failing to win medals. Youth is a prize in itself."
Yet all the fame and the memories - including having Tiramisu with the Pope - can't obscure the fact that the Toymaker has paid a terrible price for forgetting his own father back home at the toyshop.
As the old man's story unravels he delves deeper into his memories to show Noah that not everything in life is as it seems. The secret behind why the Toymaker ran away from his father - and the choice he made beforehand - is one of the main mysteries at the heart of the book.
You may guess the twist before the Old Man reveals his secret - and Noah reveals his - but it is a cleverly constructed dénouement.
Ultimately although it's a sad book - Noah has run away from home to avoid facing impending grief - it manages to offer hope. As the old man tells the boy: "You should never want to be anything other than you are."
Link: The Telegraph
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