Number 29 - Blitzcat - Robert Westall

 And yet more moggies on the cover.

I've not read anything by Robert westall in nearly 40 years. He was one of my favourite writers when i was a teenager - The Scarecrows would have been just about my favourite book ever when I was 13 or so.

This is children's literature still but I found so much to love in it.

It's the story of a cat called Lord Gort (after a rather unpopular leader of the armed forces back in WWII) who is missing her first owner after he's sent off to help the war effort and sets off to find him.

along the way she finds rest and shelter (and new homes) with a wide variety of characters and we hear their stories and how Lord Gort  helps them find their own way in the confusing and disturbing slice of history that was the Second World War.

Westall wrote about WWII a lot. The first of his books I read was the Machine Gunners, and that led me to read everything of his available at the time.

Cats also pop up in a lot of his books.  It's good to see him mix his two favourite subjects.

For a children's book, this has surprisingly few child characters - indeed, apart from a passing mention of one child stroking Lord Gort, and some children escaping the Coventry Blitz, there are none. This makes it feel surprisingly grown up in themes.  Her first temporary owner is a lonely watchman on the cliffs of southern England, who finds newfound confidence after Gort helps him spot an incoming plane and sound the alarm early enough to ward off a bombing raid. 

She then has a brief stint at a railway station where Dunkirk evacuees stroke her for luck, before staying in Dover with a young housekeeper forced to billet 10 soldiers. We witness the blossoming romance between the housekeeper and the sergeant of the troops before Gort is separated from the sergeant  somewhere near Coventry and the next chapter of her life begins. 

This is more a series of linked vignettes than a true novel but each story is so well told, and the linking is so smooth with the travels of our feline hero that it doesn't feel patchy at any time.

Also for a children's book, some events are quite shocking. There are some descriptions of death and dying that certainly felt more powerful than you expect from a book for young people. There's also a smattering of minor swearing, so this is certainly for teens rather than very young children.

The last few chapters were genuinely emotional. I was wiping a small tear out of my eye by the end.

Despite being a children's book, this is certainly great writing, and more than good enough to entertain this particular adult reader. I may have to seek out a few more of his, see if I have any left from my childhood collection hidden in the back of a cupboard somewhere. 

It's good to reconnect to some of the writers that made you the reader you are today, to see if they still measure up. Robert Westall certainly does.

PS, I know book 28 is missing if anyone is watching the numbers... I'm writing that up later, I haven't finished it yet