posted on 07 Jun 2018

Bella’s Den by Berlie Doherty

That excellent publishing house, Barrington Stoke has done us all a favour by reprinting a fully revised and illustrated version of Berlie Doherty’s novel of childhood friendship, Bella’s Den. Multi-award winner Doherty is such a subtle and skilful writer that in a little over forty easy-to-read pages she tells a tale that is full of the emotion and wonder we all feel when we begin to discover the beauty of the natural world and the complexity and companionship of other people.

The book is the story of how two girls form a friendship, tentatively at first but then with a growing sense of trust, exclusivity and even jealousy. We join the story when our narrator (who remains nameless) and her family have moved from the city to the country leaving old friendships behind:

“I had millions of friends where I lived before, all in my street, and all the way down town to school. But in my new house, there was only one person to play with for miles, and that was Bella……….So it was a good job I got on with Bella.

But I didn’t always.”

Bella, it turns out, has a habit of ‘disappearing’ when things don’t go how she wants them to. Not that she dematerialises; in fact it turns out she’s got a secret hiding place that only she knows how to get to. Slowly, as the friendship solidifies, Bella reveals her secret place to her friend but solemnly warns that the secret must always be kept – any breach of trust would mean the end of the friendship.

The secret place has lots of wonderful, messy and thrilling things to reveal but the most awe inspiring and the one that is literally breath-taking is that this isn’t just Bella’s den, it is also literally a den, the home of a family of foxes.

When our narrator accidently reveals this secret to a group of adults, farmers intent on getting rid of the foxes, Bella is incandescent with rage:

“I didn’t know what to say to Bella. It was the end of being friends. There was no more paddling in the river in our wellies, no more riding down the lane…..I knew I would never dare go to our den again.”

Then one day the news emerged that Bella and her family were moving to the Lake District and when a distraught Bella goes missing there’s only one person who knows where she has gone. In the secret den the two girls find reconciliation and friendship again and we discover the foxes have survived – just as the secret of Bella’s den will too.

It turns out that there’s a pretty big chunk of autobiography at the heart of this story and Bella, the friend at the heart of the book, was a real person – Bella Hardy – who is now, according to Doherty’s own website, an established, successful folk singer.

Doherty has captured here the emotional roller-coaster ride that can characterise young friendships and she does it wonderfully well through the narrative eye of a young girl. That’s impressive enough in its own right but she also distils what is special about children having the chance to explore nature without being constantly tagged by parents. The chance to roam free and create your own world of wonder and to understand for yourself how the world works is an essential part of growing up.

A word too for the illustrator, Ellie Snowdon who provides sympathetic and entirely well-judged illustrations in what looks like pencil and charcoal which are dotted throughout the text and never become intrusive.

 

Terry Potter

June 2018