The Driftway

I’ve had Penelope Lively books on my shelf ever since childhood, and now I understand why I never read them. This is a boring book, and the kind of book which annoys me now and would have infuriated me as a child. Paul hasn’t accepted his stepmother into the family – in fact he’s been a brat about it all. After travelling along the Driftway and listening to the stories of people from the past, he realises he’s not the only fish in the pond, and decides to be nicer to his stepmother.

Preaching “be nice” to teenagers through stories like this really irritates me. A novel should be a novel, not a social story. And the individual tales of the people of the past, including soldiers, highwaymen, poachers etc should have been exciting, but were also extremely boring. I read one book of hers that she wrote for adults and really loathed it; this one I didn’t hate, but I’m glad it’s unlikely to be reprinted for a new generation.