“ I was born twice. First in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began.”
‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’ by Carol Birch
“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler
To my sadness, I haven’t got my original copy of this book. I read it when I was about 9 or 10, I guess, and it opened up a new world of possibilities to me. That you could be free to live your own life, free of adults, free of rules, free to imagine, free to believe. The writer Clive King grew up in a house near a chalk pit, so I’d like to think he did actually meet Stig. I re-read it recently and the story was just as fresh. It was published 40 years ago but it hasn’t aged at all.
‘Stig of the Dump’ by Clive King
SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS 