Favourite writers - Leon Garfield

 

This post is the first of a few where I try to persuade you how good a particular writer is an that you should read all their books. Leon Garfield was someone I had heard of but never knowingly read. But Cro was such a fan that she persuaded me to give his books a go, and they were wonderful.

'Smith' is his best known one, above, and as you will see it is presented in this edition as a children's book, which was how Garfield is often thought of. But, with apologies to all children's authors, he is so much more than just a children's writer. You can dive straight into Smith and read it whatever your age as a great story. It is immediate and luxurious in the way it describes the city you are plunged into. The life of the 12-year old pickpocket is beautifully told, from his own viewpoint too, and there are truly scary villains in it. Garfield is very good at villains of all sorts.

But what I think Garfield does best, and I suspect his Jewish upbringing contributed to this, is to use descriptions which lightly bring religion into every aspect of the world he is describing, almost as a kind of practical joke, but with such a beautiful resonance when you notice it. In one of his novels, 'The Pleasure Garden', about a garden of pleasure and ill-repute in late 18th century London, there are little 'angels' - street children - whose role is to climb around in the trees above and report back on what they see. So the angels above are very grubby indeed.

My favourite of all Garfield's books is a collection of stories which were originally published separately but then collected as 'The Apprentices' because all of the loosely linked stories are about apprentices in London. In fact sometimes one apprentice will literally walk through one of the other stories in the background. There is the Lamplighter's apprentice, the Hangman's apprentice and my favourite, 'Tom Titmarsh's Devil', about the life and trials of a printer's apprentice whose life is made miserable but also interesting by Miss Sparrow, the 12-year old 'Printer's Devil' who flies in and out of his shop with proof pages and firm opinions. This is the description of her:

Miss Sparrow's complexion was of a streaky, Satanic black, like an old boot or a burnt tree. This was as much from trade as from nature; she was so liberally daubed with printer's ink that if you'd put her in a press, you might have had fifty clear impressions without the need for re-inking her once. 

Miss Sparrow has firm opinions about everything and a very low opinion of most books, but is very much in favour of a book that eventually gets banned by the Bishop. Well, you'll have to read it to find out what eventually happens.

Garfield also never lets his art get in the way of the plot, and all his books have that key feature of making you want to turn the page and stay up too late to find out what happens next. If you haven't ever read any of them, I'd thoroughly recommend them.