posted on 22 May 2017

Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff

Mal Peet, a critically acclaimed award winning author had started his last novel in the months before his death from cancer and his friend and fellow author, Meg Rosoff had offered to take it on. The writing is exquisite throughout and Rosoff modestly enough does not take credit for this although the way she has clearly crafted the story so well must be down to her skills as a writer. The note from Rosoff at the end of the book explains that Peet died before they were able to meet to discuss this so that she had to take it on with the help and advice of his widow, Elspeth Graham-Peet. Rosoff’s words in a piece that she wrote for The Guardian in May 2016 sum up this extraordinary achievement:

‘I went to work, imagining that I was refashioning a large schooner into a medium-sized sloop – retaining the shape, the outline, the pace, but cutting down the actual dimensions’.

Apart from its unusual provenance, this very readable YA novel has a compelling story to tell. Beck is born in Liverpool in 1907 into harsh circumstances that only become worse when his mother and remaining family all die in the flu epidemic. Aged only ten, he then has to endure three and a half years in an orphanage ‘run by the methodically cruel Sisters of Mercy’. His life is made even harder because he is a child with a dual heritage, his mother having had a brief encounter with an African American soldier. At this point in history, this was a huge disadvantage and one that causes him to be viewed with suspicion throughout his subsequent life.

His next bleak adventure takes Beck far away from Liverpool as he is one of twelve boys who are selected to be transported to Canada for an ostensibly better life.  We share his bewilderment and momentary hope about what the future might hold as he travels on a coach towards the docks and glimpses the busy streets of Liverpool for the first time since he entered the orphanage. These hopes are soon dashed when he understands that below decks on the ship is another kind of ghastly prison that soon has a ‘tilting floor slicked with vomit’.  The writing is superb throughout the novel and I found the passage that described his first experience of coming up on deck to witness the burial at sea of two of the boys who had died so vivid that it made me feel seasick.

When he and the surviving boys eventually arrive at their destination they are moved to another home which is run by the Christian Brothers. Once again, he is puzzled but momentarily encouraged by what seems to be a relatively charitable institution but I (and most adult readers) will know that other horrors are likely to happen pretty quickly. And they do. Beck is cruelly physically punished when he resists the advances of the creepy Brother Robert, a key moment in his life that is made all the more horrendous because it is so understated. I waited with bated breath to see what ghastly fate awaited him next.

This is a powerful story precisely because it is based on recent revelations about the abusive experiences of those boys 'cared for' by the Christian Brothers in many parts of the world. When Beck is then despatched to live and work on a family farm in a tiny Ontario town, I was willing him to be sent to a kind place. But no such luck as the family treat him badly, again resonating with what we now know about the experience of many such children. We share his deep misgivings as he meets the farmer for the first time:

‘His captor was a hat, a pair of spectacles, a stubbled jaw hinged upon a neck of reddened and ropey sinews’.

The work on the farm is relentlessly hard and the way in which the pigs are described is visceral:

‘The sows were grunting hillocks of filth with slimy nose-holes you could see up and jaws that looked like they could chomp your arm off’.

Eventually he makes his escape from his slave- drivers and sets out on the road to fend for himself. There is no romance about his long journey towards the Canadian border which consists of more brutality, hard experiences tempered with some rare moments of kindness from strangers. His luck changes significantly  when, almost frozen to death, he stows away in the back of a truck used by bootleggers and when he is discovered, is given a chance to experience a much better life with Bone and Irma, an African Canadian couple who give him a home and employment as a bootlegger and slowly become his quasi family.

Without spoiling the plot, I need to tell you that this period of happiness does not last, although it at least gives him a glimpse of a loving relationship, something that sustains him and gives him hope for the future.

The life changing almost Biblical moment is the one that is illustrated on the cover of the book. Back on the road again, he is rain drenched by a terrible freak prairie storm that culminates in a tree catching fire and splitting down the middle.  As he pulls himself together, he is watched with fascination from afar by Grace McAllister, who is a half Blackfoot, widowed wealthy woman who helps him to recover from his ordeal and invites him to work for her. This is another welcome period of solace for Beck as he learns that he has a talent for working with horses, he starts to relax once again and to build a positive and loving relationship with Grace.  But he is a young man who is deeply damaged by 'an infinity of cruelties' that constantly haunt him and threaten to pull against him finding any degree of happiness. The final part of the novel takes us with him on this difficult part of his journey and you will need to read it for yourself to find out what happens next.

I felt that I got to know and like Beck as a complex character from the first chapter. Shaped by his early experiences at the first orphanage he is described as ‘a hard little bastard who had learned to cry silently and dry eyed’. He grows up to learn the advantage of being quietly sullen but compliant. He develops a resilient exterior as an effective protection against being further let down and exploited. Beneath the surface he is a very lonely and sensitive boy, spirited but distrustful and understandably wary of every new person he encounters.

I am full of admiration for what Meg Rosoff has produced and imagine that she must feel a huge sense of achievement on Mal Peet’s behalf. His widow acknowledges this in the afterword:

‘I love this book. It is the extraordinary work of two great authors, who loved and respected each other so very much’.

I haven’t yet read any of his other novels, but I am definitely inspired to work through them to learn more about this interesting author.

 

Karen Argent

May 2017