Earlier - on a hill near me.

It's clouded over now, and there's a chill in the air - but this morning it was glorious up on the hill. Here are some pictures.

This is Nessie, at the beginning of the walk...

Here are some bluebells in the first bit of woodland we get to. These aren't really bluebell woods; you don't get that intense haze of blue that you see in some woods, so when you do see a patch, it's a very special treat.

When you come out of the woods, you're out in the open, at the top of the hill - this is the best bit, I think, with marvellous views across the reservoir towards the Quantocks. But I took this one further down the hill.

This is the first orchid I've seen this spring.

And here are some cowslips - these have really spread over the last few years.

Really, a very fine walk indeed.

Hour of the Bees, by Lindsey Eagar

This is the second of the books I've read recently which has a magical tree at its centre - the first was The Lie Tree, which I've written about below.

They do have some other things in common. The viewpoint character in both is a girl of about twelve - not quite a teenager. Both books deal with problematic relationships between parents and children. But they come from, and contain, very different worlds

. Whereas The Lie Tree is set in the claustrophobic world of Victorian society, Hour of the Bees takes place in the empty landscape of an American desert. In some ways it's a mythic story that is outside time - but Carol and her family are firmly rooted in 21st century America.

At the beginning of the book, Carol, her parents, her small brother Lu and her teenage half-sister Alta have arrived at the drought-ridden ranch of Serge, Carol's grandfather. Serge and her father, Raoul, have not spoken for twelve years, since the death of Serge's wife Rosa; but now he has dementia, and Raoul has arranged for him to be moved to a 'facility', a fancy place called Seville, which must be paid for by the sale of Serge's dearly loved ranch.

At first, it reads like a familiar story of a family at odds; Alta is splendidly moody, Carol wants to be at home with her school friends considering such vital problems as what sort of school bag they should all buy, Carol's mum is exhausted with the demands of work, children and doing the right thing by Serge.

But then it turns into something much more interesting. There are bees, which are mysteriously attracted to Carol, which no-one else can see - but in which Serge is keenly interested. Serge insists on calling Carol by her Spanish name, Carolina, and tells her how much she reminds him of Rosa. And he begins to tell her a story about a tree - a completely extraordinary tree. At first, Carol thinks the story is just that - a story. But then she begins to notice things. Ines, the dog, is older than any dog could possibly be. The heroine of the story is called Rosa. And though there is no longer a lake on the ranch - because, says Serge, the bees carried it away, drop by drop - there is the stump of a tree.

It seems impossible that the tragedy which is gradually revealed can possibly be sorted out within the compass of the book. But trust me - the ending will have you cheering from your armchair, while at the same time wiping away the tears.

I can't think of any other magical realist books for children, though I'm sure there must be some - but this sits firmly within the Spanish American area of that tradition. It's unusual, and really rather special.

The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge

I can't think of a single other book I've read which centres on a magical tree (the nearest I can get is the littl nut tree in the nursery rhyme, which bears a silver nutmeg and a golden pear - or the ash tree, Yggdrasil, of Norse legend) and yet I've just come across two on the space of a week.

The first is The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge

, which recently made headlines by winning the Costa Book of the Year Prize - the first children's book to have done so since Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. This is a richly complex gothic horror story, with language and concepts as challenging as Pullman's. It is the story of Faith, a girl whose father is a vicar but also an archaeologist and natural scientist living at the beginning of the nineteenth century - a time when people (mostly, but not entirely, men) could be all these things at the same time; when the worlds of art and science were much closer than they are now; and when new wonders were constantly being discovered - and old certainties anxiously challenged. 

Faith's father is strict and distant, and dismissive of his daughter, even though she is clearly much cleverer than her younger brother, Howard. No-one tells her why the family must suddenly move to the island of Vane, but Faith is a curious girl who refuses to be limited by what is expected of her, and she makes it her business to find out what is going on. 

She soon discovers that her father is fleeing from rumours that he is a fraud; that many of his most famous fossil finds are not genuine. She decides to investigate further - and she finds that at the centre of his obsessions is a mysterious tree which he has hidden in a sea cave. This tree, she eventually discovers, literally feeds on lies - and produces fruit which, when eaten, reveals hidden truths...

Meanwhile, the rumours about her father have spread to Vane. Gossip spreads, and the atmosphere becomes as menacing and brooding as the swiftly growing tree. Faith decides she will harness the tree's power to find out the truth - but of course, when we go searching for the truth, we don't always like what we find...

I found this a compulsive read, and you have to admire Faith's determination to confound expectations about what, in Victorian times, would have been appropriate for a girl in terms of life chances and behaviour. There are other interesting female characters too; her mother, Myrtle, seems fairly dreadful at first, but i very much warmed to her as she gradually revealed  unexpected depths of deviousness and determination.

The tree itself - well. Very sinister. There's something about this element of the story that reminds me of The Monkey's Paw, by WW Jacobs, which also features an object with mysterious powers found abroad, whose appropriation by westerners leads to unexpected and terrible consequences - as does Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. Perhaps there's something to do with colonialism going on here - the downside of the urge to explore which led to so many adventures and discoveries from the end of the eighteenth century on.

Coming soon: The Hour of the Bees, by Lindsay Eagar - another magical tree, but a very different book.

'O Wall, O sweet, O lovely Wall!' *

A few days ago on a family holiday in Devon, I was walking on the coast path above Ilfracombe when I saw this wall, and I was fascinated. We had come over the brow of the hill, just out of the picture to the left, so were looking down on the structure. At first I couldn't work out what it was. It's not obvious from the picture, but it was very wide - almost a couple of feet, I'd say. It was made of slate, which gleamed in shades of blue, grey, copper, silver and ochre: seven rows of slender slices of slate, packed close together, and the same on the other side. I imagine there was a space between, which was filled with earth. Then the whole thing was topped off, paved with bigger pieces of slate. It ran between two slopes, across a shallow valley. It was about three quarters done; the remaining quarter looked like a tumble-down bank.

Here's a close-up. 

I think that any dry stone wall is a thing of beauty, but this seemed to me to go several steps further. There was nothing to say who was building it. But think of the hours it must have taken, the skill it must have required, the patience it must have demanded, to fit together all those thousands of pieces of slate! I love it that someone  - or several someones - had decided that it was worth the effort, the time and the cost, to build this structure in the traditional way, instead of just knocking up a quick fence.

As we walked on, I looked more closely at the boundary at right angles to the new wall. You could see glimmers of stone, but the whole thing was covered in vegetation; all sorts of grasses and clumps of plants which later in the summer will no doubt flower and play host to insects and birds. It looks now just like part of the landscape, but once it too must have been shiny and new.

I keep thinking about that wall.

(*The title is in honour of this being Shakespeare Month. It's from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Sc.1)

Brussels

Regular readers of this blog will know that I go to Brussels quite often, because I have family there. None of them, thank heaven, were caught up in yesterday's attacks, but it was a bit of a moment when I read the breaking news of the explosion at Maelbeek metro station; my son goes through there on his way to work.

I wouldn't claim to know Brussels all that well. When I go, it's to visit family rather than to visit the city. But I've nevertheless become very fond of it: the Jubelpark, or Parc du Cinquantenaire, with its museums and rose beds and playgrounds and wild parrots; the forest which edges the city in the southeast, and where families walk and cycle and run at weekends; the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the waffles and chocolates, the comic book characters everywhere which remind you that Belgium is the home of the comic strip. The Brussels I know is a pleasant place, a nice place to be.

Obviously that's not how everybody sees it. I can't begin to see into the minds of young, disenfranchised men, who can not only contemplate the possibility of doing violent, indiscriminate harm to people they don't even know - but can actually carry out such acts. I don't know, what, in the aftermath of yesterday's attacks, anyone can usefully say.

I love it that part of the swift response on Twitter was to use the image of Tintin, Brussels' best known son.

I'm not going to say, 'Je suis Bruxelles', because it's not a declaration that really seems to me to mean a great deal. But I just wanted to say to the people of Brussels that I, like so many others all over the world, am thinking of you. And in the end, just as in the adventures of Tintin, the bad people will not triumph. But I know also that for the families and friends of the victims, that thought will provide precious little consolation right now.

Warrior King and Barmouth - links...

Am over on The History Girls today - indulging in a bit of time travel back to 1970s Barmouth. On a Sunday. Big mistake... See why here.

And over on Eclectic Electric, a lovely review of Warrior King from Karen Bush. This is my book about Alfred the Great - in which Alfred is a hero, not the weed he appeared to be in the recent TV serial...

You can read the review here, and you can buy the book here.

And IF you read it, and IF you like it, it would be truly magnificent if you could post a short review on Amazon: it seems that when you get a certain number of reviews, Amazon starts to promote the book, and that would be nice. Very, very nice.

The Drover's Dogs, by Susan Price

I only got this yesterday, but I've finished it already - even though I'm in the middle of reading a novel for fun, a non-fiction book for research, and I had to put on a sudden unexpected spurt to read book group book for tonight, when I thought it was for next week. I have to admit I skimmed this last - it didn't grip.

But The Drover's Dogs did, very much so.

It's told in a very distinctive voice - the voice of an old man remembering his life as a ten year old child, in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The book begins with Sandy being virtually sold by his poverty-stricken mother to a neighbouring farmer. It's tough reading at this stage, as the narrator relates his bewilderment and disbelief as he realises what is happening to him. Things only get worse as he finds that his new 'owner' is a cruel bully, as is his son; Sandy is not even allowed to eat what little food he is given with the family, and he has to sleep out in a shed with only sacks and rank straw for bedding.

Finally he runs away. Fortunately for him, he falls in with two dogs - the drover's dogs - who are travelling back to their home on Mull, having been sent back by their owner after helping him take cattle down to the lowlands to sell. The dogs look after Sandy, and their kindliness foreshadows that of their owner...

It's a simple enough story, but the way it is told is enthralling. Susan Price makes you see, hear, smell and taste life in this particular time and place - and she has created such an engaging character in Sandy that your heart sinks when when he's sad, and you smile when he's happy - and you really can't leave him till you know that he's going to be safe and sound. Some of it is quite hard to take - bullying, cruelty, extreme poverty: all these are harshly present.

A word about the layout, which I find very satisfying. It's quite a large book - 23cm x 15cm - which I like. And when you open it, it's very easy on the eye, with generous amounts of space and a nice little drawing at the head of each chapter - hope you can see this in the picture, above.