Review: Skylarks' War
Gaby Meares
The Skylarks’ War is a beautiful book. I immediately fell in love with Clarry, her difficult older brother Peter, and their charismatic cousin, Rupert.
Clarry and Peter can’t wait for the summer holidays, when they can escape the confines of boarding school (for Peter) and living with their distant father (Clarry) to stay with their grandparents, running wild in Cornwall with Rupert. These summers are idyllic, and take on an almost mythical hue in the face of the looming dark cloud of World War One. McKay has a gift for describing not only landscape, and the emotions it can engender, but also fully-developed characters. How could the reader not fall in love with Rupert:
Rupert had a curving smile and lazy green-gold eyes, completely unlike Peter’s wary grey glance. His jokes were the best, his tennis balls flew the highest, his stories charmed the most listeners, cats strolled over and sat beside him, dogs regarded him with comradely affection, the sunlight tanned him apricot-gold and rain rolled off him in silver drops. He was recklessly kind. For Clarry he was the centre of summer, the light on the water, the warmth in the wind, the welcome-back song of the bee-humming moor.
When Rupert enlists and is sent to the Front, we share Clarry’s distress. And as Clarry struggles to find her place in the world, when women are not expected to study or have any independence, we share her frustrations.
Writers must tread a fine line when describing war to a younger audience. How do you explain this obvious madness to a child? Like this:
On either side of the line were the armies. Neither was winning, although not because they didn’t try. They tried very hard and when one way didn’t work they tried another. There Germans were the first to use poison gas, and the British were to first to use tanks. Perfectly reasonable people, the sort who in their previous lives let wasps out of windows; read storybooks to children, doing all the proper voices; flinched at flat notes; and hardly ever shouted, got drunk or forgot their mothers’ birthdays - absolutely ordinary people - made considerable efforts to kill other absolutely ordinary people whom they had never even met.
I was entranced by this story and its characters. I loved watching them all develop and grow. I was incredibly moved by Rupert and Simon’s war experiences. This novel may be written with an intended primary school audience, but I think it deserves a much wider readership. I will be recommending it to everyone I possibly can, no matter what their age.