An Episode of Sparrows

A must-read for anyone who loves gardening, and likes books that capture childhood in all its heartache and thwarted desires.

"She could not explain it more clearly than that but she knew it was the trying that was important; even if it fails, it goes to swell the sum total of trying, as a martyr's faith, even if he is killed for it, swells the faith of everyone." (p. 226)

An Episode of Sparrows is written just like a grown-up novel, but it's a story about children and for children, told just as seriously as any adult story and all the more charmingly for it. Lovejoy Mason is one of the children on Catford Street in London. It's a poor area, for the most part, just after the end of the Second World War, with bombed out lots and ruined buildings. All 11-year-old Lovejoy wants is a small flower garden of her own (she has practically nothing else), but finding a spot and getting things to plant in it requires ingenuity and stealth. And some assistance from Tip Malone, one of the neighborhood toughs (who must be all of 13), and the annoying attentions of 5-year-old Sparky, who idolizes Tip and begs to be in his gang. The garden is not Lovejoy's only problem; children and adults alike have their struggles in this memorable tale. Wish I'd run across it when I was a kid.

As a writer, I would like to be Rumer Godden. She writes deceptively simple books that can be read and appreciated by children but have subtle riches enough to satisfy readers of all ages. Thematically as well as stylistically they are inclusive and steeped in humanity.

This was my first reading of An Episode of Sparrows, and I wish I had been exposed to it when I was young because it would certainly have spoken to the child I was. Set in London in the aftermath of World War II, it depicts a world of physical and emotional privation; many parents today would not want their children reading about the harshness of such a world, and that’s a loss. Children’s emotional landscape is very intense, and to my mind they respond well to books that don’t whitewash or dumb down the world they are struggling to understand.

The story begins with a pair of aging spinsters still living in a mostly vanished world of gentility. Angela is all about good works and committees; Olivia has never really connected with life and drifts through it like a ghost. Angela is self-confident and judgmental, a bit of a tyrant; Olivia wistfully watches the outside world through the window of her old schoolroom.

The world she watches is that of Catford Street, a melting pot of immigrants and families clinging desperately to the edges of getting by, their perilous condition echoed by the bombed-out landscape around them. From Olivia’s observation point the story zeroes in on one of the Catford Street children, Lovejoy Mason. Lovejoy is the daughter of a vaudeville performer who used to include her little daughter in her act, but as both age, there is no place for Lovejoy on the road with her mother anymore. Mrs. Mason rents a room from a nice couple and goes out on the road; her visits to her daughter, like her payments for the room, are getting scarcer and scarcer.

Because of the itinerant life Lovejoy has led, she has little education and a narrow understanding of life; she knows a bit about clothes but little else. She still idolizes her mother but the reader can see clearly the deficiencies of her upbringing and the risks she faces. She is a classic unwanted child, hard-shelled but desperate underneath for someone or something to attach to. The Combies, the couple in whose house she lives, are kind but not really keen to take on the parental role thrust on them, and they have problems of their own. The husband, Vincent, is a dreamer who feels crushed if he doesn’t have a connection to the finer things in life, and he has no discipline when it comes to inviting in beauty that he can’t afford. All their lives are fragile and the threat of dissolution hovers over them like a shroud.

Lovejoy finds a packet of seeds dropped on the sidewalk and sets about doing the impossible—making a garden in the blighted landscape she inhabits. She has no idea how to go about it and stumbles her way into learning, with many setbacks. But the idea of the garden is an obsession; something in her needs to create, to own, to be in the presence of regenerating life. She gains an ally in a boy from the neighborhood, and together they set about trying to realize her vision. Even though the boy can’t really see or understand her vision, he sees her need for it and becomes protective.

Their efforts lead them into trouble, trouble from which a few enlightened and observant adults seek to rescue them when it threatens to sweep them away like so much trash. This is an unsentimental story about finding hope amid despair, and the kind of courage it takes to pursue dreams in a dehumanized world. As such it is a classic postwar novel, but its themes and the way they are played out make it rise above its moment to achieve universality. It is a classic.

A mix of "Secret Garden" and "Mandy" along with elements of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Oliver Twist." A great story of a young girl's desire to have something beautiful of her own and an innocent young love. The framing of the story - starting and ending with some narration by a couple of spinster sisters who overlook the street - is a little weird but doesn't interfere too much with the essence of the story and is the vehicle for the resolution so they kind of have to be around.

Loved the way Godden is able to portray a sense of joy or a sense of despondency so well that the reader can actually feel it themselves. Her ability to pull at heart-strings without being sappy or maudlin is really fantastic.

Definitely a fun story with, of course, a happy-ish ending.

"That was true, and dirt, earth, has power, an astonishing power of life, of creating and sweetening; it can take anything, a body, an old tin, decay, rust, corruption, filth, and turn it into itself, and slowly make it life, green blades of grass and weeds."

Rumer Godden has yet to disappoint me, and An Episode of Sparrows was no exception. On the surface, it's a very simple tale: two children--the street "sparrows" of the title--decide to create an "Italian" garden in the rubble of a bombed-out church (the story takes place in London, post-blitz.) Eleven-year-old Lovejoy, who has been more or less abandoned by her mother and lives as a boarder with a local couple who own a restaurant, convinces slightly-older Tip, leader of a "gang" of mischief-makers, to help her with her efforts. Alas, these young people run afoul of the local "garden society" matron, for the "crime" of digging up dirt to use for their own plants.

Really, it doesn't sound like much of a premise--at least I was a bit skeptical--but Rumer Godden excels, as always, at breathing all her characters, adult and children alike, to life. Without ever lecturing the reader or becoming didactic, she also manages to state a lot about the necessity and pitfalls of aspirations, faith, and of people reaching out to help each other. I especially liked the naive relationship that young Lovejoy formed with her idea of the Virgin Mary, from the statue in the church. My verdict: a book that is, so far, surviving the test of time. Definitely worth a read.

At first, I had a little trouble falling into the story. By the end, I had lot of trouble not crying on the bus. What a lovely novel. It's a children's book, but with plenty of adult themes. People are good, bad, cruel, kind, thoughtless, attentive, cowardly and brave. Sometimes all at once.

What a lovely book.
Lovejoy finds some seeds which she sows in the bombed ruins of post war London.
The gang destroy it but Lovejoy finds the ruins of a church where she then grows her garden with the help of Tip and Sparkey.
Beautifully written and reminds me of The Secret Garden.