Living in a large old house in the square are middle-aged sisters Angela and Olivia Chesney, Angela is the youngest by about a decade, but it is to her that Olivia, and the garden committee –among others – defer. Catford Street is a place where nothing very much ever grows, the children there are small and scrawny, running wild, gathering in gangs in the bomb damaged ruins that still litter the street. At the end of Catford Street, is a gracious London square, a square of houses of an altogether different kind, they have a very pleasant garden, a gardener and a gardening committee. Set in London sometime after the Second World War, among the street children who run up and down the grim, unloveliness of Catford Street, An Episode of Sparrows shows poignantly the simple joy that a garden can bring. She understands acutely the heartbreaks and frustrations of children, how so often adults misunderstand them, and let them down. Rumer Godden’s depiction of children and childhood is particularly good as I have found in other novels by her. As such it was chosen by the Librarything Virago group as one of the books for the childhood section of the Seven Ages of Women theme read. To me it certainly doesn’t read as a children’s book (although nothing in the content would preclude a child reading it) but more, as a book for adults about children. I have seen An Episode of Sparrows referred to as a young adult or even a children’s book, although Wikipedia lists it in amongst Rumer Godden’s adult novels, and having read it I think it fits there more comfortably.
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