Mark's Reviews > The Willows in Winter

It having been some time since I last read 'Wind in the Willows' my approach to this sequel, picked up in a second hand bookshop a while ago, was uncertain. I could remember the names of the characters, I could recall the general outline of the Kenneth Grahame's classic but I could not really call to mind the way the individual characters react and relate to one another in that story.

This was probably a blessing. I read this book without my placing the rather unfair pressure on the new writer of fulfilling my childhood memories or of maintaining an illusion of childhood long aged. Horwood is not in the business of transforming the original by looking at it from another perspective; eg. 'The Child Thief' which is brilliant but radically overhauls the Peter Pan story; or by transporting much loved characters into alien spaces or situations which can often destroy and uproot with no real success. Instead he sets himself to take the same characters, in the same places and doing much the same stuff. I cannot say whether he catches Grahame's dialogue or wit or anything, i don't remember the original well enough but what I can say is he tells a witty and fun story involving adventure, daring do, nobility, cowardice, vanity, sadness, affection, feasting, and excitement and he uses the river and the Wild Wood and Toad Hall and the castle and its courtroom and dungeon all to great affect and all without it becoming a same old/same old. He succeeds in injecting newness into an old and loved story and has a lovely turn of phrase.

Of the River
' he had never known her splashes so - sonorous; her meanders so - miserable; her normally majestic flow so- final!'

Or his grasping of the ease of their friendships
'It would be pleasant to sit in your boat once more with you sculling, which you do so much better than I, trailing a paw in the placid water, which I do so much better than you.'

Clever characters captured in a couple of sentences eg. The miserable but friendly gaoler trying to console a prisoner condemned to 25 years in prison;
'Look on the bright side, you're getting on a bit so you're not likely to survive more than twenty. It'll go by in a flash'

I also loved his personifying of the winter, making it a living character in its stubborness
'Winter's attempt to thwart the Spring finally began to peter out in April'

or again ' The next few days passed rapidly, and if the weather stayed inclement and Winter would not yet admit defeat and be gone, the spring-like mood among the animals of river, of bank and of Wild Wood made up for it'

Lovely, simple and towards the end, as arguments are made up and forgiveness sought and granted you nod and settle back thinking, 'Yep, all is right with the world'. Escapist nonsense but quite lovely.
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