Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 August 02 • Friday

This book was originally published in 1911 as The Hampdenshire Wonder, a title which links it to John Wyndham's similarly named and somewhat similarly plotted The Midwich Cuckoos (1957, and better known by the title of its film adaptations, Village of the Damned).

The Midwich Cuckoos is about children whose fathers are aliens from outer space but whose mothers are residents of a small English village. The children grow at almost twice the rate as human children, and have frightening telepathic powers.

The Hampdenshire Wonder is about just one child, born to human parents, who is startlingly advanced intellectually. He can speak after a few months and has read tens of thousands of books by the time he's nine. He also has something along the lines of telepathic powers. People who look into his eyes can not help but do what he wants to do.

This child's view of reality is as far beyond that of even the most learned person he encounters as your reality is beyond that of your dog's. Try to explain, say, how a radio works to your dog and you have an idea of how impossible it is for Victor (a name that has an obvious meaning in itself but might also be a link to Frankenstein) to discuss his thoughts with anybody.

It's a very well written and engaging book. I sailed through it. You can read the whole thing here.

The first line is "I could not say at which station the woman and her baby entered the train".

One of the themes treated quite well by the author is a clash between science and religion. The first time Victor speaks, he asks his mother who God is. Soon Victor is scandalizing the Reverend Crashaw with "blasphemy". Fortunately Victor is under the protection of the local squire, Challis, himself an anthropologist who is dedicated to learning. The tension between these two forces is symbolized neatly by Challis's library.

The library at Challis Court occupies a suite of three rooms. The first and largest of the three is part of the original structure of the house. Its primitive use had been that of a chapel, a one-storey building jutting out from the west wing. This Challis had converted into a very practicable library with a continuous gallery running round at a height of seven feet from the floor, and in it he had succeeded in arranging some 20,000 volumes. But as his store of books grew—and at one period it had grown very rapidly—he had been forced to build, and so he had added first one and then the other of the two additional rooms which became necessary. Outside, the wing had the appearance of an unduly elongated chapel, as he had continued the original roof over his addition, and copied the style of the old chapel architecture.

Crashaw and Challis have their own churches.

There's really a lot going on this book. The characters subtly but effectively provide the author with opportunities to create a realistic environment for this fantastic tale and also to make some interesting comments about human tendencies and history.

Best of all is that it's a compelling story. There's very little action and the structure of the book deals with this by making some jumps in chronology, all explained perfectly reasonably by the narrator. It's not quite a novel of ideas, more a thorough and satisfying exploration of a "what if" idea.