Rumer Godden is an author who always gives us more to ponder under the surface than is evident in her often simple stories. If we're willing to dig, there'll always be something mystical, or some spiritual application or observation.

This one begins in the early 1950s, soon enough after the war that there is still plenty of evident street damage, including demolished buildings. The setting is Catford Street, an area of London which is one step up from a slum. It's full of desperate people struggling to make ends meet and barely succeeding.

The 'sparrows' of the title are not actual birds but children aged between 5 and 15. This age demographic are neglected, semi-waifs, generally as unheeded as the little grey birds, and left mostly to their own devices to pop up again as young adults expected to do a hard day's work. They're only noticed when they intrude on adults' attention by making nuisances of themselves, in which case they're treated like pests.

The main character is a thorny and shameless little street thief named Lovejoy Mason, who's been dumped by her mother on the family they were boarding with. Lovejoy pilfers a packet of what turns out to be flower seeds. Disgruntled at first, she decides to poke them in some earth to see what will happen. Thus begins Lovejoy's unexpected passion for horticulture and her decision to plant surreptitious flower gardens in old bomb sites left by the war. She's fascinated by what seems to her the miraculous alchemy of the earth. But finding more seeds and more suitable plots is her greatest challenge, and she'll even stoop to stealing money from a church!

The story becomes quite a micro-war of its own, as Lovejoy gains and loses ground. Some boy gangs have their eye on the same plots of ground for hang-outs, and she finds an unexpected ally in Tip Malone, a 13-year-old gang leader whose softer side is unexpectedly stirred by her plight. Their friendship is super cute, as Lovejoy assumes more and more from Tip, making us wonder how far she can stretch his good nature until it snaps.

Lovejoy's reluctant guardians provide a great secondary plot, as the proud Mr Vincent Combie (whose real name is George) is a chef who establishes his pride and joy, a classy restaurant, slap bang in the middle of Catford Street, where he lives. He struggles to accept the fact that his ideal clientele probably won't go near such a forlorn district. In this way, Vincent's restaurant is perhaps a grown-up equivalent of Lovejoy's flower garden. The question is how far can such dreamers make any headway in their grim reality?

One of my highlights is Miss Olivia Chesney, a middle-aged nonentity who knows how to sympathise with the plights of underdogs. She realises there's a fine line between total blarney and a kind of faith in what they hope and believe is going to happen.

The other highlight is the prickling of Lovejoy's hardened conscience, especially when she sets out to rob the local Catholic Church and develops a fascination with a Madonna and Child statue. Godden puts it this way. 'The statue seemed to find something in Lovejoy that matched it.' This is so often the case with the arts; including books, music and visual art of all types that touch our hearts. Readers, viewers and listeners each bring something of their own to click into place with what their creators intended. Or else they have that germ activated by whatever they read, perceive or hear.

Just as Lovejoy experiences this phenomenon with the statue, perhaps a similar thing occurred in my spirit prompted by this book itself along with many others. I trust it will be the same for many other readers too.

this was a good book but not something I would normally read

Una scrittura corposa, avvolgente, polifonica.
Rummer Goddeb regala in questo romanzo un'infanzia vera, cruda, impertinente.
La trama ruota attorno ad un "episodio di passeri" (traduzione letterale del titolo originale), ovvero il furto da un'aiuola privata di terra commesso da due ragazzini e una ragazzina per arricchire un lembo di terreno per farci un giardino.

La maestria della scrittrice inglese stanel farci entrare dentro le piccole ma straordinarie vite dei tre bambini e di tutti gli adulti che hanno a che fare con loro e con l'episodio del furto.

Non si può non innamorarsi della sfortunata ma impertinente Lovejoy, tifando sempre per lei soprattutto nei momenti peggiori. Come non si potrà non provare la più alta stima di Tip, degno coprotagonista della vicenda.
E poi, c'è il microcosmo di Catford Street, la strada dove abitano i protagonisti, con i suoi abitanti e le sue storie che diventano il grande e caleidoscopico palcoscenico dove si mette in scena la vita.

I agree with other reviewers that this book is more a book for adults about children than a book for children. It is an interesting story of children (and adults) trying to make beauty and meaning from what little the world has given them. A tale of those who are valiant and have largeness of spirit. Of those who notice the sparrow and fall and do something about it. That God may allow the sparrow to fall, but its fall not to go unnoticed.

Re-read 2014 - still wonderful. I had forgotten so much except of course, the garden. I would like to also add in case anyone happens to read this review - that this book is a great introduction to Godden's style that is at it's peak in China Court. This small incident becomes just one of many stories in China Court. If you loved Episode of Sparrows, try China Court - I'd be surprised if you didn't love them both equally in the end. **private note below

Set in a small section of postwar London, it tells of the young sparrow-like children and the streets they live on. But especially, it is the moving story of Lovejoy Mason, a wispy, ill-clad waif whose dream is to cultivate a flower garden in the midst of a bombed out Catholic chuchyard. Though she is poor, and left with strangers by her mother, she pursues her obsession aided by two other street urchins, one willingly one not.

Two of my favorite reads this year were books from The New York Review Children’s Collection. This series publishes books that have fallen of print or out of mainstream attention and the 2 that I read – Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer and An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden are outstanding reads.
An Episode of Sparrows takes place in London shortly after World War II. The poor neighborhood children are called sparrows and Lovejoy Mason is one of these sparrows. She has known very little Love or Joy in her life. Her singer mother has left her behind to be cared for by an elderly couple – Cassie and Vincent. Vincent has set his hopes on having a high-class restaurant even though they live in a run-down section of London. Lovejoy has her heart set on having a garden, even though there isn’t a single patch of dirt to create a garden – only concrete and rubble from the bombings. Fierce little Lovejoy isn’t going to let anything stand in her way of getting a garden – lack of dirt, lack of money and gardening tools won’t deter her. And Vincent is equally determined to get his restaurant – even if it bankrupts his family.
An Episode of Sparrows has the perfect mixture of hope and despair, kindness and cruelty, and Lovejoy Mason is a character you won’t soon forget.

Thank goodness for reprints and Shiny New Books, an online compilation of reviews of recently published books and reprints. If they hadn’t published a terrific review of this novel when it was re-issued by Virago, I might have overlooked it. An Episode of Sparrows is often promoted as a book for children. I remember trying it when I was in my 20s and being put off by the idea of reading a “children’s book.” Although this would be a great book for a child to read, it would be a shame for an adult to miss out on such a good novel. Rumer Godden has worked her magic once again in telling the story of an almost orphan, the inimitable Lovejoy, who finds purpose in her difficult life when she attempts to create a garden in the ruins of a bombed out church. Numerous reviewers have described the book in great detail. I loved the characterizations of the children and the adults. I also appreciated Godden’s description of London in the years following WWII. A solid 4.45 rating.

When my daughters and I found a used bookstore in an out of the way village, I picked up a few of Rumer Godden’s hardcovers. Now I wish I had gotten all of her titles!

“An Episode of Sparrows” is just one episode in the aftermath of the London bombing from the life of a young child, Lovejoy Mason, that will eventually have a huge impact upon Olivia, an older woman living in her sister Angela's shadow. If put in simple terms, this novel is about Lovejoy's wish to have a garden of her own, but this novel is anything but simple. Drawing the reader into the everyday lives of London characters, "An Episode of Sparrows" examines human pretensions, survival, resilience, law and order and what constitutes real compassion versus true justice, and whether we are going to live as an 'Angela' or an 'Olivia'.

Lovejoy comes across a packet of seeds, and her imagination is sparked.

“I want a garden,” said Lovejoy. If she had wanted the moon or a diamond tiara it would have been as easy to get in Catford Street.”

Aided by Tip Malone, a street gang boy, she finds a small place behind a bombed church that is almost inacessible to the public and totally private. But how to get the necessary materials, a spade (small trowel), a digging fork, and seeds? Because Lovejoy for all intents and purposes seems to have been abandoned by her mother and given into the care of her landlady, Mrs. Combie.

“It was queer to think of people in Catford Street owning gardens. Lovejoy had lived there all these years but she had not seen what she saw now, the flowers – but they must always have been there, thought Lovejoy. Now, in almost every window, she saw pots with plants growing in them; pots of red and pink flowers, of yellow ones, daffodils – she knew them – and hyacinths, as well as green things, ferns, palms, rubber plants; Sparkey’s mother grew fuschsias in her flat window.”

Growing up in the streets of London has, if nothing else, made Lovejoy resilient, tough and creative. With Tip to help her and Sparkey, a small hero-worshipper of Tip’s, Lovejoy begins the difficult task of fulfilling her dream.

What a poignant story. I wanted to take Lovejoy in, give her new dresses and shoes and a new coat (she has grown out of her clothes and the written pleas to her absent mother garner no help). I wanted to give Lovejoy’s mother a good scolding (at the very least), and buy a gardening apron, tools and flats of pansies for Lovejoy. I wanted to send customers to Vincent’s restaurant. Vincent who is kind to Lovejoy and takes her for Sunday walks, is struggling and fighting his own battles to subsidize his restaurant. I wanted to encourage Olivia to stand up to her (bossy) sister Angela, and I wanted to slap Cassie!

“It’s not old fashioned to say God is good. Remember, not one sparrow can fall to the ground –“

“But they fall all the time,” said Olivia. “We knock them down. We knock them, crush them – carelessly or carefully, it doesn’t matter which, and they fall. That’s what humans do to humans, so don’t talk to me about God.”

I had initially read “Kingfishers Catch Fire” by Godden and enjoyed it but it didn’t have the impact this book had.

Back in 1968, when I was in junior high, we were assigned writing a letter to a celebrity in an English class. Oh, the fan mail to Leonard Whiting and Michael York! (Can you guess which movie had just come out?) Me, I wrote to Rumer Godden. I had read many of her books, but this is the one I mentioned in my letter.

It is achingly sad in its depiction of connections made and broken, and what 13-year-old doesn't want to inhabit tragedy for a time? (Hence the popularity of said movie.)

Unlike An Episode of Sparrows, my story had a happy ending -- Ms. Godden wrote back to me!

While I enjoyed the Episode of Sparrows it is a quite dated. At times the novel seems like it really is a book for young adults, rather than for an adult audience. The story of two street kids, in post WWII London, stretches your imagination especially in terms of the entrancement young gang leader Tip Malone feels for the scrappy, young girl, Lovejoy Mason. Because of Tip's feelings for Lovejoy, he is made a partner in her "crime" of stealing dirt from the wealthier adjoining neighborhood garden square, so that Lovejoy can develop a tiny garden in the ruins of the bombed out neighborhood Catholic church under the watchful eye of the local priest. The idea of the power of the earth, and perhaps people, like Lovejoy and Tip, as well as plants, to flourish and rejuvenate itself/themselves is the focus of the novel.

Deceptively subtle and heart-lifting, like all books by this undeservedly forgotten author. Little Lovejoy Mason has been more or less abandoned by her mother, a singer fallen on hard times. Now Lovejoy lives with Vincent, an inspired chef who lives in the wrong neighborhood for the kind of cuisine he insists on offering. Although Vincent's adoring wife Ettie does her best to help him fulfill his vision, they get deeper and deeper into debt, especially after they buy a fridge on the installment plan. When Lovejoy gets her hands on a packet of cornflower seeds, she decides that making a secret garden for herself will give meaning to her drab and insecure life. Unfortunately, the first site she chooses, a bomb ruin from WWII, happens to be the headquarters of a teenage gang who destroy her work and chase her away. However, the leader of the gang, Tip Malone, is a kind and mature boy who helps Lovejoy start another garden in a disused part of his Catholic churchyard. Eventually a busybody from the posh part of the neighborhood twigs that children are stealing good garden dirt from her property, and instructs her gardener to catch them read-handed. Lucas does catch the kids, but is then exposed as having himself cheated his employers. Nonetheless, Angela tries her best to get Tip and Lovejoy convicted. Fortunately, her sister Olivia undermines her efforts, and the wise priest from the Catholic Church, who knew of Lovejoy's garden all along, helps her too. In other hands this story could be preachy and saccharine, but Godden has a wonderful touch and imbues this tale of a handful of stolen earth with deep spiritual meaning.