Journey to the River Sea

Foreword

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.