For my final choice I’m going back to my childhood again. I’m cheating a bit with this in that it’s a novel, but it’s a fairly short children’s novel and I’m so keen to recommend it to people that I’m just going to go ahead. One day when I was at middle school, I guess in 1987 or ’88, I delved around in the classroom’s box of reading books, pulled this out and thought it looked worth a try. It turned out to be the most beautiful, haunting story I read when I was a boy. When Marnie was There is the tale of a lonely girl named Anna, who takes a train from London to a Norfolk coastal village (modelled on Burnham Overy Staithe) to convalesce from illness in the care of an elderly couple, the Peggs. When she arrives, she walks down to the staithe and across the water she sees the Marsh House, which captures her imagination. One night she finds a boat and rows to the house, where she encounters a mysterious girl, Marnie, who becomes the friend that Anna dearly needs. It is a story powerfully evocative of the austere beauty of the north Norfolk coast, acute in its understanding of childhood loneliness, often poignant, sometimes perilous, and with a skilfully crafted resolution so moving that my eyes have moistened just thinking about it.
First published in 1967 by Collins
A Personal Anthology 