RJ Green

This is one of two books that I won recently in a competition on the bbc.co.uk/bristol web site. This is the first competition win I've had in a long time but I was pleased. Take a look at the BBC Bristol page to see what I had to do!

Overall this is a fairly simple story with fairly simple characters set in a real, 19th century, flood that took place in Sheffield. It's not a long book, as it runs in at only 132 pages and it's reasonably easy to read. However, there is a problem with this book and that is that the author has been far too generous with his descriptions.

The description problem is such that if Green had not been so liberal with them the book could have been finished within around 60 pages. For example, on page one of chapter one:

The fire winked at her devlishly with a single red hot eye in the middle of a pile of unburning clack coal. Up in the long chimney the devils of the wind chortled and screamed with laughter at her failure to make a blaze.

I have made a point of personal preference and realise that other readers will find Green's description bringing the story to life for them.

To the story now! Noan North is a horrible man and purely by accident he falls down stairs and breaks his neck such that he lays immobile on the floor and the only person there to witness the even is Sally, the central character in the book. Sally is too feminine to be of much use in the situation so North sets her the task of getting help.

Sally doesn't like North as he even berates her as he lies on the floor incacpcitated for the rest of his life. Then we read page after page of Sally's tribulations as she seeks help only to find that the wind howls, the rain lashes, people cannot be found. Eventually there is so much water in the dam and the ground that something just has to give. The dam wall breaks and huge swathes of land and some buildings are washed away, including North and his jerry build pile.

Sally is beside herself as North's final words to her that she would "burn in hell" ring in her ears. Sally's boyfriend to become husband goes blind during the story and she is more concerned about him than ever she was about North and this plays on her conscience too.

Still, life has to move on and it takes the rest of the book until we Sally begins to purge her guilt from her soul. No one can assuage Sally until she works her way through her problems herself. She calls her first born son Noah in her attempt to exorcise North's ghost.

North's skeletal hand turns up with bloostone ring still attached. She tries to pawn the ring only to find that all that glistens isn't gold. Yet she uses this find to take another nail out of coffin and it helps to some extent.

In the meantime she has become a baker and confectioner and a successful one at that. Even her blind husband is a success in the business too!

I suppose it's not letting the cat out of the bag in this case to say that they all lived happily ever after and they do: even North's daughter who was as badly affected by her father as servant girl Sally was.

You might like the style of writing. The story is fine but I think that Green dragged out Sally's torture and torment of fighting the lements on that fateful night far too much: around half the book, in fact!

© Duncan Williamson

18 March 2004

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2004