Gardam, Jane. Hollow Land. Walker Books, 2001.
Reason read: Jane Gardam’s birth month is in July. Read in her honor.
Jane Gardam introduces her readers to Bell Teasdale and Harry Bateman and we are witness to their childhood adventures through various linked short stories. When we first meet the boys Bell is eight years old. He befriends Harry, one of the Bateman children renting Grandpa Teasdale’s farm for a summer holiday. Every summer Bell and Harry celebrate boyhood and survive life changing events: becoming trapped in a mining cave, witnessing a horrific flood, recovering a table stolen by gypsies. Over the course of twenty years their lives change but their friendship remains constant. My only word for Hollow Land is pleasant.
Confessional: the friendship between Bell and Harry reminded me of my childhood. Like Harry’s family renting Light Trees, my friends from “away” would rent a cottage every summer in Maine. Each summer if we were lucky our friendship would pick up right where we left off the summer before. More often than not, the parents would chose not to rent consecutive years and the friends would become pen pals until we either saw each other again or fell out of touch.
Line I loved, “He can inherit this weather” (p 134).
Author fact: Sadly, Jane Gardam passed away last year at the age of 96.
Book trivia: Hollow Land was promoted as a book for young adults.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jane Gardam: Too Good To Miss” (p 96).
~*LunaSea*~ 