Described
by the author, Caroline Smailes, as a ‘dark and brooding modern fairytale’, ‘The
Drowning of Arthur Braxton’ is a book unlike any other I have read before.
The first thing I loved about this book was the
fact that the narrative voice changed many times, allowing different characters
to tell their story. This gave the book a very varied writing style, which kept
me engaged. My favourite character was Arthur, the main protagonist, a boy in
the modern age who ran away from school due to bullying and discovered an
abandoned bathhouse.
The author wrote Arthurs lines exactly as they
would be spoken by a modern age teenage boy, using words such as ‘twatting’,
and abbreviations like ‘’bout’ and ‘maybes’. This really gives the reader an
opportunity to hear Arthurs tone, and it feels as if you get to know the
character very well throughout the book. He also often describes time periods
not in minutes, but in episodes of ‘Waterloo Road’, which does create humour
but also gives the reader a very realistic idea of how long he has been in a
situation for, (come on, everyone’s sat through at least one episode of
Waterloo Road).
His first introduction starts with the line
‘Not only do I have a boner but I’m running out the yard with my pants around
my arse and its raining on my cock’. This instantly creates humour and makes
you want to read on to find out more of this truly unusual and shocking opening
to a chapter. Shortly after, he goes on to say ‘Estelle Jarvis is fit, there
was no way she’d ever be interested in me. I mean, just cause she liked all my
profile pictures on Facebook’. This instantly shows the reader the time period
and age of the character within the first two paragraphs, without having to
directly tell them, which would be impossible without straying from the story.
Arthur is the second speaker however, the story
begins with Laurel, a fourteen year old girl who gets a job at ‘The Oracle’. Caroline
Smailes portrays Laurel through her individual tone of voice as well, using
lines such as ‘they never pay for nowt’ and the word ‘proper’ to emphasise
certain situations. This shows she is a young girl who is less educated through
the very informal tone she uses.
I was confused when I finished Laurel’s section
of the story and began Arthurs, as there hadn’t been any talk of mobile phones
or Facebook before. This was when I realised that there is a significant time
jump between Laurels introduction and the rest of the story. I felt this was a
really interesting way of laying out the novel, as the reader gets all the
background information about the past and the setting from Laurel before going
into the present day story.
I was drawn into this book after the first few
pages and found myself unable to put it down, as there was constantly twists
and turns in the story and I was always intrigued to find out where it would go
next. When I began reading this, I expected something completely different, and
couldn’t possibly have guessed how the story would end. When I got to the last
few pages, I still had no idea, and this book kept me fully engaged until the
very last word. This story is full of crazy events that could never possibly
happen in reality, but the author really brings the fairytale to life in the
reader’s mind and makes you completely believe every word she writes.
A truly magical and unexpected story, I would
recommend ‘The Drowning of Arthur Braxton’ to anyone, no matter what age or
gender.
