Customer Reviews

Five Boys: A Novel

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As you will read with the other reviews, the book is divided into two parts but actually tells three stories. The first story about Bobby starts out well enough but Jackson seems to lose interest in telling that story, which was really interesting, and just evacuates Bobby out of the town and pretty much out of the story. He then turns his attention to how the villagers in the town Bobby had been evacuated to and then out of get along when Americans take over most of the area before the Normandy invasion and then after. Again, Jackson seems to lose interest in telling the story for the war ends but none of the impact of the war is explained. For instance, the father of one of the boys doesn't make it home but it doesn't come up except in passing in story three. I'd think that would make a pretty big impact on a boy and thus be a great story. But Jackson just ends the war and then picks up with a rather bizarre tale of the Bee King and some strange metaphor of revenge and then ends the book.

None of the stories develop fully, although you'd like them to. What results is some splashes of wonderful writing and interesting characters amid a story utterly disjointed. In the end it reminds me of my English grandmother that laughed at the wrong places in jokes because she knew she was suppose to laugh but had no idea what was funny. Jackson can apparently tell a tale but has no idea how to tie a story together and seems to flounder around with ideas. I was very disapointed.

I picked up this book believing it was a novel about a young London boy sent to live in Devon to avoid getting killed in the Blitz. However, this is only the first of three separate storylines, which are direly lacking in cohesion but form a charming and poignant ensemble. The first part of the book follows Bobby, who is yanked from his London family with little warning, stuck on a train with no explanation, and winds up in a small town in the care of an unprepared spinster. What follows is a kind of warm fish out of water tale as the city boy struggles to adjust to country life. Central to this is becoming friends with the villages "five boys", a rowdy pack of boys his age who spur each other to various mischief and tomfoolery.

The second part of the book kind of wanders away from Bobby's tale and broadens out into little stories about some of the adult villagers and one of the five boys. A catalyst for this is the arrival of the large American Army preparing for D-Day. This means the forced relocation of those living in a large area right next to the village, which is an interesting and unknown story in its own right. But basically, the wacky antics of the kids gives way to the wacky antics of the adults. These include stories about an undercover operation to recover a pig from American territory, the effects of a dance to which the GIs are invited, and a detailed episode of how a ratatcher exterminates a field full of rats after the GIs are gone.

In the final third of the book, Bobby has returned to London and the five boys are enthralled by a different newcomer, a mysterious man who keeps bees and is impervious to village prying. The beekeeper completely captivates the boys and his enigmatic nature keeps one guessing as to what's really going on. Despite hints here and there, the ending comes as a bit of a shock, and can be read as emblematic of the end of innocence in England.

It's a good book, charming and well written, with plenty of evocative descriptions and smells, and good stories. However, one wonders why it's constructed (and marketed) as a novel, when it's really a series of linked short stories. Without a central figure, mood, or theme, the book doesn't quite hold together in the way one expects a novel to. That aside, it's quite enjoyable, and makes a good companion to Michael Frayn's novel Spies, which is about two London boys during the war.

"Five Boys", is the second novel from author Mick Jackson. I don't know what the proper term for his work would be for it is not structured like a typical novel, for at times it reads like separate short stories. All of the events in the book involve the same general area once London is left, but after an initial period of time, the book changes from a singular continuing tale embracing some characters, to almost forgetting others, and focusing in depth on very few.

A young man is evacuated from London with a group of children for their safety from the bombs of the German Luftwaffe. The problem is that in addition to the normal trauma of being separated from family and friends, he meets a quintet of young boys near his new home that makes the idea of staying in London and chancing the bombs an alternative worth considering. These five little brutes all born within two weeks of each other also share the same capacity for havoc and cruelty that came with the brief time they all entered the world. The progression of their abuse is fairly typical, and then it stops, and with it the traditional narrative sequence stops as well.

The author then shares a series of vignettes about a variety of people in and around the village and the effects of having a large pre D-Day contingent of Americans take over a portion of their community for invasion training. This causes a variety of inconveniences which in turn provide for a good deal of comedy. A source of food is behind the checkpoints the Americans have set up and it is decided that it must be retrieved. The cast of characters brought together, and the coffin, a baby carriage, and the effects of the animal eating far too many apples that have become hard cider, make for an interesting chase.

These various episodes continue until the arrival of a man known as the beekeeper. His arrival coincides with the book returning to a more traditional progression, and an end that is startling at the very least.

"The Underground Man", was the first novel by this author, and I will probably go back and read it once again. If I remember correctly that book was eccentric because of the character and his actions, while this book is a bit eccentric in its structure. This writer is enjoyable, he is not just another author treading familiar ground, he goes to new places, and takes new paths to reach them

Five Boys by Mick Jackson is my selected book for my bookshare. I thought the story was good but sometimes it was a little hard to understand. For the most part I liked the book. There were a lot of funny parts in the book. One thing I thought was funny was when Bobby was forced to eat bugs. There were also some adventures in the book. Overtime the groups of kids that Bobby was a part of sneaked into a person's house who they thought was a German spy. Soon the group of boys found out that the man was using his telescope to spy on women at a gym. These are somethings I liked about the book.

Bobby is evacuated from London during World War II. He wound up staying with a woman named Miss Winter. While he stayed with her, Bobby was kept busy by sorting lots of peas and beans. He tried to become part of a gang of five boys. Before they let Bobby into the gang they made him eat many bugs, and made him do many other things much worse. The gang of six boys had many adventures. One adventure that they had is that they sneaked into a suspected spies house, but it turned out that the man was only spying on women in the gym. Then they became fascinated with the mysterious Beekeeper.

[...]

At the start of Mike Jackson's bitter-sweet novel, "Five Boys", we follow schoolboy, Bobby, as he is sent away from his home in war-time London into the supposed safety of the depths of rural Devon. Principal amongst our (and Bobby's) new acquaintances are the Five Boys, an irrepressible group of youngsters whose wild escapades impinge upon much of the life of the village in which the young evacuee finds himself billeted. Much of the first part of the book follows Bobby's trials and ordeals in coping with being away from family and friends and amongst strangers (with even stranger ways) whilst also charting his gradual acceptance and eventual madcap initiation into the company of the Five Boys.

Then, as American GI's - in training for the forthcoming D-Day invasion of Normandy - begin flooding into the rural idyll of Devon, the book's emphasis shifts away from the outrageous activities of the boys and gradually comes to encompass the equally outrageous goings-on of the wider village community. These are presented in a series of only partially (it seems) connected vignettes, mostly hilarious although often poignant - this is war-time, after all - too.

Mick Jackson's writing style - never less than refreshingly vibrant - coupled with his eye for detail, a wicked sense of humour and an imagination that at times quite beggars belief, all serve to conjure up an entirely enthralling tale of English eccentricities. Indeed, not since A. G. Macdonell's "England, Their England" has there been such a sparkling exposition of the true nature of the unbridled English spirit, as was once so often exemplified within small, and especially rural, communities (but is now, alas, almost all but gone).

From the very outset, the reader is drawn in by the very finest of prose, swept off one's feet and carried along by the flow of events in much the same way as is young Bobby. Towards the end of the book, though, the reader begins to get an uncomfortable feeling that the flow might not be as tranquil as its surface suggests. And as the book proceeds towards its concluding pages, with the chapters becoming ever shorter, one can feel a distinctly ominous undertow beginning to develop, as even the very words themselves begin to cascade over each other, tumbling ever more rapidly and inexorably towards an increasingly threatening ending.

While the book is not without its faults - some aspects of the latter parts of the tale feel just a tad out of kilter with its time-setting, for instance - these are more than compensated for by its entirely loveable quirkiness. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before this story is made into a movie - properly handled it would make a very good one - but please don't wait for that to happen before reaping its many rewards firsthand. This has to be one of the best literary offerings of the year. Read it and weep - mostly with laughter!