One for Sorrow
Philip Caveney continues his time-travelling series with a well-plotted, fast-paced story that sees our hero, Tom Afflick, returning to 1882 Edinburgh to encounter the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. The novel hinges on the concept that Tom’s interventions are crucial to the publishing of Treasure Island in book form. Tom’s encounters with previous characters – his soul-mate, Catriona McCallum, and the evil MacSweeney, the ‘Plague Doctor’ – give new impetus to the continuing themes of the series, in which Tom must defeat MacSweeney and protect Cat. Threaded around is a present-day story-line in which Tom comes to terms with the presence of a new step-dad.
The story plays engagingly with the tropes of fictional time travelling: are the people of the past ghosts or truly alive, can events be changed without affecting history, and is time linear or circular? To this reviewer’s mind, Caveney negotiates these pitfalls with a sure foot, and produces an exciting read which somersaults with increasing chaos between an endangered present and a threatening past. The end is resolved yet left open to a sequel in good, time-honoured fashion. Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud.
The story is told from Tom’s sometimes confused perspective in sturdy prose and crisp dialogue. Evil is done well: ‘He could feel the deadly grip of bare bones beneath the leather gauntlet.’ The relationship with Cat is moving and unusual, in that in this episode Cat is an aged woman, and Tom is cursed with knowledge of the date of her death. The author enjoys playing with the anomalies of disrupted time: put on the spot by Stevenson’s hostile step-son, Lloyd, Tom picks up a guitar and sings Wonderwall, having the crowd ‘virtually eating out of his hand’ by the end. A fun read for 8 – 14 year olds.
