29 June 2001 CORAM BOY by Jamila Gavin, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2001

"It was a hurried affair in all that wind and rain and darkness and the swinging light from the storm lantern, which Otis hung on a branch directly over the ditch. Otis plunged in his spade. Nothing too deep or careful. There was a lot of water. Just dig a hole deep enough to submerge the bundles. Foxes would do the rest..."

While reading CORAM BOY I damned near had to remember to keep breathing. Those bundles being buried were babies and Otis Gardiner is an 18th century mass murderer. A peddler by trade, he's making his fortune dealing in unwanted babies and children. He sells those that he's able into servitude or slavery, and takes money from the wealthy to deliver their newborn illegitimate offspring to the famed orphans' hospital that Captain Thomas Coram has founded in London in 1741. Most of those babies never make it there.

But this doesn't even begin to hint at the treachery, the romance, the tension, the friendships, and the historic 18th century British setting within this unforgettable read, which has already been named the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year in Britain. Extremely well researched, and written in a traditional narrative style, it will surprise you, horrify you, and undoubtedly send you scurrying for other books by the musically trained, veteran British author Jamila Gavin.

The story is set in Gloucester and London, and involves two pairs of fathers and sons.

One son is from an aristocratic family, and that son is on a collision course with his father who expects him to grow up, leave behind his incredible talent and passion for music, and take his rightful place in society:

"It was not just because he seemed a gentleman that made Alexander different...Even the bishop treated him with awe and called him 'our little genius'. Not only did Alexander have the voice of an angel, but he played the harpsichord and virginal precociously well and had composed obsessively from the age of six."

The second is Otis Gardiner's son, growing up in an incomprehensible nightmare.

"Meshak was an awkward lad. At fourteen he was taller than his father and growing. But he looked as if he had been put together all wrong; his body was all over the place, his head was too large, his ears too sticking out, his lips never quite closing. There seemed always to be a sleeve at his runny nose. His arms and legs dangled from his body, uncoordinated and clumsy; he dropped things, tripped over things, fumbled and stumbled. All this meant that people--especially his father--shouted at him, cuffed him, jeered and sneered at him, so his whole look was that of a cowering dog. If he had a tail, it would have always been between his legs, as he slunk by waiting for the next kick. He had a vulnerable, infantile look, with his pale-freckled face beneath a stack of wild red hair, and his large, watery, blue eyes, which often stared round at the world with incomprehension. But no one ever saw him cry or laugh. People called him a simpleton--a loon--and wondered why his father hadn't abandoned him years ago."

How the pieces of this gripping story fall into place had me reading breathlessly throughout the night. There are characters to totally adore, to utterly hate, and those in-between, whom you'll wonder about for days afterward.

Brilliant and disturbing, CORAM BOY is undoubtedly destined for a similar fame on this side of the Atlantic.

Richie Partington

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