Eva Ibbotson - Journey to the River Sea

Only to shortlist this wonderful book for the Carnegie Medal was an injustice, no matter what the other titles were! Here is certainly one of the finest, funniest, most exciting epic adventures ever written. It is an extraordinary literary achievement, but none of this is more than we might expect from Eva Ibbotson.

I should declare an interest, or rather make a confession, here. It is really hard for me to write in such glowing terms about Journey to the River Sea . Most authors have a tendency to be competitive however much they try to hide it. I don’t think I’m any better or worse in this regard. But the name and the books of Eva Ibbotson have in the past, I acknowledge it, turned my eyes green with envy. This is because so many friends talk with such admiration and affection about the work of Eva Ibbotson. My wife, Clare, in particular, has never stopped singing her praises ever since she read The Star of Kazan .

I think Clare has read every one of Eva’s books. So of course she encouraged me to do the same. ‘You won’t know you’re even turning the page,’ she told me. ‘But her books are more than page-turners. They are beautifully written; her sense of place is so good that you feel you are right there in the streets of nineteenth-century Vienna, or in a boat gliding through the Amazon jungle, her characterization and dialogue so tellingly drawn that you feel you’ve met these people, known their histories, heard their voices. Everything she writes is just so compelling. You have to read her books!’

The eulogies went on and on, and the more they went on the more reluctant I was to read them. But in the end I had to. It seemed churlish not to. I mean, I didn’t want her thinking I was envious of all this adulation, did I? So I read Journey to the River Sea .

I have to report that yet again my wife was right. The range and ambition of this book is extraordinary. Set a hundred years ago, it follows the life and journey of Maia, an orphan girl, as she faces up to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. She is sent from a well-meaning but prim London boarding school to join distant relatives in the Amazon jungle, where she imagines she will find the loving family she longs for and has never had. For a romantic and lonely child this sounds like dream come true. But one by one her dreams are shattered.

Despite the disappointment of finding her new family completely horrific, Maia is blessed with wonderful friends who help her through the twists and turns of this incredible journey. And we too are her friends, so well is her character drawn. We will her through her trials and tribulations, suffer with her, rejoice with her. What a book! What a writer! She manages to do the impossible, to write an epic story that is intimate at the same time.

So I’m no longer green with envy, just full of admiration and affection. I’m simply grateful for the life and work of Eva Ibbotson, whose books enrich us all.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

It was a good school, one of the best in London.

Miss Banks and her sister Emily believed that girls should be taught as thoroughly and as carefully as boys. They had bought three houses in a quiet square, a pleasant place with plane trees and well-behaved pigeons, and put up a brass plate saying: THE MAYFAIR ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES — and they had prospered.

For while the sisters prized proper learning, they also prized good manners, thoughtfulness and care for others, and the girls learnt both algebra and needlework. Moreover, they took in children whose parents were abroad and needed somewhere to spend the holidays. Now, some thirty years later, in the autumn of 1910, the school had a waiting list, and those girls who went there knew how lucky they were.

All the same, there were times when they were very bored.

Miss Carlisle was giving a Geography lesson in the big classroom which faced the street. She was a good teacher, but even the best teachers have trouble trying to make the Rivers of Southern England seem unusual and exciting.

‘Now can anyone tell me the exact source of the River Thames?’ she asked.

She passed her eyes along the rows of desks, missed the plump Hermione, the worried-looking Daisy — and stopped by a girl in the front row.

‘Don’t chew the end of your pigtail,’ she was about to say, but she did not say it. For it was a day when this particular girl had a right to chew the curved ends of her single heavy plait of hair. Maia had seen the motor stop outside the door, had seen old Mr Murray in his velvet-collared coat go into the house. Mr Murray was Maia’s guardian and today, as everyone knew, he was bringing news about her future.

Maia raised her eyes to Miss Carlisle and struggled to concentrate. In the room full of fair and light brown heads, she stood out, with her pale triangular face, her widely spaced dark eyes. Her ears, laid bare by the heavy rope of black hair, gave her an unprotected look.

‘The Thames rises in the Cotswold hills,’ she began in her low, clear voice. ‘In a small hamlet.’ Only what small hamlet? She had no idea.

The door opened. Twenty heads turned.

‘Would Maia Fielding come to Miss Banks’ room, please?’ said the maid.

Maia rose to her feet. Fear is the cause of all evil , she told herself but she was afraid. Afraid of the future… afraid of the unknown. Afraid in the way of someone who is alone in the world.

Miss Banks was sitting behind her desk; her sister, Miss Emily, stood beside her. Mr Murray was in a leather chair by a table, rustling papers. Mr Murray was Maia’s guardian, but he was also a lawyer and never forgot it. Things had to be done carefully and slowly and written down.

Maia looked round at the assembled faces. They looked cheerful but that could mean anything, and she bent down to pat Miss Banks’ spaniel, finding comfort in the feel of his round, warm head.

‘Well, Maia, we have good news,’ said Miss Banks. A frightening woman to many, now in her sixties, with an amazing bust which would have done splendidly on the prow of a sailing ship, she smiled at the girl standing in front of her. A clever child and a brave one, who had fought hard to overcome the devastating blow of her parents’ death in a train crash in Egypt two years earlier. The staff knew how Maia had wept night after night under her pillow, trying not to wake her friends. If good fortune was to come her way, there was no one who deserved it more.

‘We have found your relatives,’ Miss Banks went on.

‘And will they…’ Maia began but she could not finish.

Mr Murray now took over. ‘They are willing to give you a home.’

Maia took a deep breath. A home. She had spent her holidays for the past two years in the school. Everyone was friendly and kind but a home…

‘Not only that,’ said Miss Emily, ‘but it turns out that the Carters have twin daughters about your age.’ She smiled broadly and nodded as though she herself had arranged the birth of twins for Maia’s benefit.