Starlight

by Geoffrey Lewis

Paperback £6.99; ISBN 978-0-9545624-5-3; September 2005; SGM Publishing
Digital

This novel from Geoffrey Lewis, his first to be set on the canals which he knows so well, marked a complete and radical departure from the popular detective stories for which he is known. Some elements of the style will, however, be familiar to his growing band of readers, in particular his ability to fire the emotions with a few well-chosen words.

Starlight is a short and deceptively simple story, making use of the author’s deep familiarity with the world of the canals:

Harry Turner is eleven years old, and his world is about to be turned upside-down. His parents are moving, leaving the only home he’s known, to live in a tiny village near the Oxford Canal. Uprooted from school and friends, he despairs of finding any agreeable company in his new home – until he meets Jake Woodrow, the son of the local lock-keeper.  From shaky beginnings, their friendship develops rapidly through the long, hot summer of 1955 into a deep, strong bond – a bond whose strength is to be tested in spectacular fashion. The drama and tension of two young boys, each seeking for friendship in spite of their widely differing backgrounds and circumstances, takes place against a backdrop of carefully – researched factual events; and real characters, working boatmen of the time, add a spice of authenticity to Geoffrey Lewis’ tale.

The mood ranges from heartwarming humour to unbearable poignancy as he leads the reader through that heat-wave, as it was seen by a young schoolboy in the idyllic setting of an Oxfordshire village. Starlight reverses the balance of the David Russell stories: told in the first person by Harry himself, it is the adults who are the secondary characters.

His father is the owner of an engineering company, with a factory in the town of Kidlington, just north of Oxford itself; his mother has no need to work. Harry is the only child; comfortable perhaps rather than really wealthy, his lifestyle, the surroundings he takes for granted are in dramatic contrast to those of Jake. Son of the poorly-paid canal employee, an ex-boatman who has lost an arm in a boating accident, their way of life is basic in the extreme, partly because the lock cottage has no gas or electricity, nor any road access. Shunned by his classmates as a ‘dirty boatee’, his response to Harry is at first very wary, while Harry, as the unknown ‘new boy’, senses a kindred spirit in the apparently self-reliant loner. As their friendship grows, each shows his strengths and vulnerabilities, until they are virtually inseparable.

But then, tragedy strikes!

From the press:

‘Compulsive Reading’ – Roger Wickham

‘A Beautiful Tale, Beautifully Told’ – Amherst Publishing

‘I’m sending the bill for the box of tissues.’  – Pamela McManus