Charles Bailey
Growing Pains
The Children's Home
By Charles Lambert
Aardvark Bureau 203pp £9.99
The premise of Charles Lambert’s The Children’s Home is deceptively simple: children have started magically appearing on the estate of a severely disfigured and misanthropic gentleman called Morgan. A mystery is established. It would be reasonable to expect the rest of this short novel to go about solving it, but instead the unexplained expands: the children are clairvoyant and able to disappear at will; the source of Morgan’s wealth is obscure (there are hints that it comes from a munitions factory); the housekeeper, Engel, knows more than she is letting on; two guards from ‘the ministry of welfare’ (straight out of Franz Kafka’s The Trial) are searching for stray children; Morgan finds a mask that remoulds his face to hide his disfigurement; a waxwork of a pregnant woman is found, and then worshipped, by the children; outside the estate, a devastating but unremarked-on war has occurred. In answer to the question with which the novel ends, ‘Have you learned nothing from all this?’, I would have to say, ‘Yes – I’m more confused than when I started.’
The proliferation of plot lines is not the main problem, however. In fact, the strange twists and turns are rather charming. Instead, what this unusual novel lacks is a narrative viewpoint from which the reader can take his or her bearings. Morgan and his friend Dr Crane are frustratingly incurious
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Coleridge was fifty-four lines into ‘Kubla Khan’ before a knock on the door disturbed him. He blamed his unfinished poem on ‘a person on business from Porlock’.
Who was this arch-interrupter? Joanna Kavenna goes looking for the person from Porlock.
Joanna Kavenna - Do Not Disturb
Joanna Kavenna: Do Not Disturb
literaryreview.co.uk
Russia’s recent efforts to destabilise the Baltic states have increased enthusiasm for the EU in these places. With Euroscepticism growing in countries like France and Germany, @owenmatth wonders whether Europe’s salvation will come from its periphery.
Owen Matthews - Sea of Troubles
Owen Matthews: Sea of Troubles - Baltic: The Future of Europe by Oliver Moody
literaryreview.co.uk
Many laptop workers will find Vincenzo Latronico’s PERFECTION sends shivers of uncomfortable recognition down their spine. I wrote about why for @Lit_Review
https://literaryreview.co.uk/hashtag-living