Book Review: Stop the Clock by Alison Mercer

Chick Lit comes of age

  

Stop the Clock is the debut novel by Alison Mercer, and tells the story of three university friends, Lucy, Tina and Natalie. With the certainty of youth, they each know what they want out of life, and ten years on, when the story really gets going, they appear to have it – Lucy has an apparently happy marriage, two children and a perfect home; Natalie is married to the boyfriend she’s dated since college, and is pregnant; Tina is living the single life (with a secret affair on the side) and has a byline in a national newspaper, just as she had always hoped. But, as the story goes on to explore, having what you wanted isn’t necessarily what you thought it would be...

It’s an engaging story, and a quick read – the sort where you feel deeply irritated to have to abandon it in order to make meals for your children, or go to the playground – but that’s not to say it’s flighty. It’s got a lot more to it than the sort of frothy high-heels-and-confetti novels that first gave chick-lit its name (and status). It’s not a simple romance, it’s about what happens after that. And it’s not all tied up neatly at the end, because life’s not like that. It also deals unflinchingly with childbirth, which is surprisingly rare in fiction given how many women go through it, and how willing most mothers are to share their birth stories with each other. It’s a brutal portrayal of hospital obstetrics [...Tina cried out, ‘Help me! Help me!’ and the doctor said, ‘Yes I think we will help you,’ and selected a pair of scissors and cut Tina open...] and doesn’t shy away from the effects of motherhood on a woman’s life, physique and perspective.

Most of all, it’s about the sisterhood of good friendships, and what that bond can sustain; the narrative moves fluently from one character to another so that you see all three of them responding to circumstances in their own way. It’s a wonderful heart-warming story of women living life, and dealing with what is thrown at them. Oh, and it’s funny too. Highly recommended! 

Alison has written an article in the Guardian about the birth scenes: you can read her article here.

Enid Blyton

My generation grew up with Enid Blyton, and I know I am not alone in feeling that her decline in popularity is a shame. It became fashionable 10 or 20 years ago to decry her dated style, sexist characters, incipient racism, simplistic plots, unrealistic denouements and limited vocabulary, and in some ways these criticisms are difficult to deny. And yet she has been one of the most successful authors of the twentieth century, and there are an awful lot of us who still regard her work as that which lit the flame of our reading. She's still in print, which says something about our continued affection for her, but I feel it's time for critics to be less grudging about her - she is due a more positive renaissance!

She adheres pretty much to what is now regarded as an essential formula in children's literature - the convention of making the parents or guardians absent or at least peripheral to the children's
activities, thus leaving them free to explore and tackle challenges on their own, getting into trouble, and getting themselves out of it again. This can be an exciting discovery for a relatively young reader exploring their first "proper" books - and she writes about real children, not anthropomorphised animals like so many other children's books. [I should add a caveat at this point: that I never read The Magic Faraway Tree, or Noddy and Big Ears. I began with the Secret Seven, and quickly moved on to the Adventure Series, the Famous Five, and Malory Towers, so what I'm saying is based entirely on those!]

Blyton has that magic touch, and the ability as Susan Hill puts it for "turning non-readers into readers": in simple terms, she writes exciting adventures and you have to be pretty hard-hearted not to get drawn in. The children in her stories are allowed access to the outside world in a way few modern children experience, and as such are pretty resourceful and used to using their own initiative, without the aid of magic or any gimmicks. As a child I was deeply envious of the way they'd just set off into the countryside with a rucksack full of picnic stuff and a map (in much the same way as I adored the Fell Farm series by Marjorie Lloyd, where the children go off and camp in the Lake District on their own) and I think this remains a big part of the appeal.

Blyton's characters undeniably live in a world that seems dated to us, but we can still identify with them, and long to take part in their adventures, whether that's a midnight feast in the dorm at Malory Towers, or tiptoeing through a secret passage by the wavering light of a torch. Yes, some of her attitudes stink (what comes to mind is the girls always doing the washing up, and George being told she can't muck in because she's not a boy...) but they need to be seen as very much of their time - and could provide useful springboards for discussion with a modern child about how attitudes have changed.

Just writing this blog post is making me want to raid the library for an armful of her books, and stock up on torch batteries so I can stay up late and read under the duvet...

Geocaching at Harcourt Arboretum

I have never been geocaching before. Didn't want to. Didn't see the point - why ruin a perfectly good country walk by bringing along a piece of beeping technology to interfere with everything? Mostly, I still think that, but having allowed my husband (a geek of the first order), and my 5 year-old daughter (full of the enthusiasm one has at that age) to convince me to try it, I find myself forced to admit that my one and only experience of geocaching, at the Harcourt Arboretum near Oxford yesterday, was actually really good fun. I'm blushing at the admission, but there it is. Even in the pouring rain, I enjoyed it. And it wasn't quite what I expected.

It's part of the Arboretum's series of family activities for the summer holidays, and there are two trails, designed with the Institute of Physics. We chose the longer trail, with ten caches, which took about 2 hours. We were thankful for our wellies, waterproofs, and an all-terrain buggy, in which our 18 month-old slept most of the way round; at her pace it might have taken us about 4 times as long.

So why did I enjoy it? Well firstly, the kit is not too complicated, even for a Luddite like me. The only problem with the GPS unit is that you have to be moving for it to work, so you have to pick a random direction at first and set off confidently, so that in 10 yards or so you can change direction equally confidently once the kit has worked out where you are. It took us on a lovely convoluted route round the meadow and amongst the trees, and not knowing where we would be sent next added a pleasing air of mystery. The ten caches were hidden in army surplus waterproof tins, containing a log book and an activity designed by the Institute of Physics, and it was this aspect that was most interesting.

I'm not in any way a physicist, having given up formal study of the subject at the tender age of 14 due to some spectacularly poor advice at school, but these were perfectly accessible to me, and the practical nature really appealed to our 5 year-old - in one activity she got to pretend to be a bat, echo-locating insects (the rest of us standing round her in a circle responding to her "beep beep" with our own!). We also loved the one about thin-film interference, which explains the way we see the fabulous colours of peacock feathers (peacocks being a feature of the Arboretum), and had a pair of sheets of polarising film with which to make mosaics:

All in all, a brilliant couple of hours, and an activity that I would highly recommend, even if you don't think of yourself as the geocaching kind!

Harcourt Arboretum
Institute of Physics
The Geocaching Association of Great Britain (GAGB)

A Necklace of Raindrops

How wonderful would it be if you could stop the rain by clapping your hands? Or go out in it without getting wet?

I was one of those children who perpetually had their nose in a book, and one of my favourite authors was Joan Aiken. I’m pretty sure my first introduction to her work was the collection of short stories called “A Necklace of Raindrops”, with black and white illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski. 

It is in the title story that a little girl receives a necklace from the North Wind, which gives her these powers and more. I have always loved this story, with its fabulous combination of the magical and the real:

‘Who are you?’ Mr Jones said. ‘What are you doing in my holly tree?’

‘I got stuck in it, can’t you see? Help me out, or the storm will go on all night. I am the North Wind, and it is my job to blow the storm away.’

So Mr Jones helped the North Wind out of the holly tree. The North Wind’s hands were as cold as ice.

 As a thank you to Mr Jones, the North Wind becomes the godfather to Mr Jones’ new baby, Laura, and gives her a necklace:

From under his grey clock he pulled out a fine, fine silver chain. On the chain were three bright, shining drops.

The North Wind promises to visit Laura on her birthday every year to give her another raindrop for the necklace until she has ten drops, giving her great powers, including being able to go out in the rain without getting wet, swim the fastest river or deepest ocean safely, stop the rain by clapping her hands, and make it rain by blowing her nose. But of course, there is a catch - the North Wind tells Laura that she must never take the necklace off, or it will bring bad luck. And of course, because it's a story and there must be a problem for our heroine to overcome, she is indeed persuaded to take it off before she receives the tenth drop, and then has to fight to get it back before the North Wind visits on her birthday and realises what she has done...

It's a fabulous story (as are the rest in the collection) and I've always loved it - like many children I longed to be Laura, and have such a glamorous godfather. I too would have loved to be able to control the rain, and of course it sounds like such a beautiful necklace! So the story has always stayed with me, and although my original copy of the book went the way of many cheap paperbacks in a busy household, I bought myself another, and since I started making jewellery I have been determined to make my own necklace of raindrops. I've made several versions, but this latest is closest to the description in the book, using a fine sterling silver chain, with ten crystal quartz flat oval beads to represent the rain drops in the story. 

This necklace is for sale in my Morgan & Pink etsy shop (click on the photos to go direct to the necklace; if it's sold out, please use the link above to the shop, and use the contact option if you'd like to order one).

This blog post was originally written for the Morgan & Pink website, but now that I've moved my shop front to etsy, that website no longer exists, so I've taken the liberty of publishing it again here.