"There's a particular energy to novels written from the point of view of small children. Humour, of course, in the things the child misinterprets; pathos in the things they feel they must keep hidden; jeopardy in the dangers we can see, and they cannot. As any relative or babysitter can attest, even the sweetest child can become mind-numbingly dull when they're all the company one has, so there's a skill to charm without boring."
"In 1988, the longsuffering mother in Sean Farrell's first novel, Frogs for Watchdogs, is stranded. This Englishwoman has had a boy and a girl with a handsome rogue of an Irish actor, but he has walked out on them. Asked to leave a commune unsuited to children, skint, too proud, perhaps, to return to the protection of well-heeled parents in England, she rents a farmhouse on the cheap in the deep countryside of County Meath,"
"Unnamed, so that he becomes a sort of Everyboy, he is a vividly unwashed, scabby-kneed creation, consumed by a little-man protective love for his mother and sister, ruled by devoutly held private rituals that are bound up in the passionate interest he takes in the landscape, birds and animals around him, from the screeching crows to the easily spooked Jacob's sheep. He is drawn"
Child-point-of-view narratives mix humour from misinterpretation, pathos from concealed feelings, and jeopardy from dangers visible only to adults, demanding skill to charm without boredom and to enable readers to infer adult dramas. Frogs for Watchdogs (1988) portrays an Englishwoman left with two children after their Irish partner departs; forced out of a commune and short of money, she rents a cheap farmhouse in County Meath to grow food, keep animals, and practise a dubious form of healing. The older daughter is sent to boarding school while the unnamed son grows feral, fiercely protective, ritualistic, and deeply attuned to landscape and animals.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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