That the book knows full well that it is a book is part of this circularity of fiction and reality. However, shes quite happy to tease the reader with asides about what is coming up next, as well as how hard it is to write a book. The whole story is narrated by Lucia, although like Oswald Bastable of The Treasure Seekers (another very self-conscious narrator), she refuses to directly reveal her identity. Fourteen, as JM Barrie didnt quite say, is the beginning of the end. Adventures ensue, much to their delight, because it is important, as Lucia points out, to have at least one big adventure before you turn fourteen and start to become dull and grown-up.
They flee the city, landing at the miniature castle their American great-aunt is currently renting. The book tells the story of the three Hardscrabble children who, having been sent to stay with an aunt by their distracted, artist father, instead find themselves lost and alone in London. No matter how strange or unbelievable an event, story or person seems to be (a five-legged cat, an imprisoned child-monster, a stuffed miniature zebra), sooner or later there is a logical(ish) explanation. However, The Kneebone Boy also suggests that the world is far more normal than we might hope. Along the way, there are mechanical rats, hidden passages, a mighty dragon-slayer, Fluffernutter sandwiches, a deposed Sultan, missing relatives, a local legend and three resourceful, intelligent childrenand all around and through the story, like a wisp of fog, slinks the sense that the world is a stranger, more mysterious place than the grown-ups would have us believe. The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter, lets you in on a secret tooon many secrets, really. He views anything Im reading with great suspicion, as if it were broccoli in book-form, (wholesome, good for you and not all that much fun to consume). No, the problem was that my son had picked it up off my desk and then disappeared with it. Not because I had a hard time reading it: in fact, I found it a pleasantly gripping read.
I had to race to finish reading The Kneebone Boy in time to write this review.
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