Chalk

This was one of those rare books that stopped me in my tracks. At times not an easy read, I felt it spoke to me, making the story involving, in places painful but above all, personal.

I should explain that at school in the late 70s/ early 80s I was bullied quite a bit, I was a bit swotty and not a mixer so with a few pages I identified strongly with Andrew Waggoner. He's an ordinary boy for the time: into Doctor Who, not sporty, a bit shy, trying to avoid the school bullies, with mixed success.

Then one evening - something happens. I was frankly gobsmacked by the place that Cornell goes to. I won't give away what it is but it's no exaggeration to say nothing will be the same again for Andrew. The book really begins at this point and describes what happens over the next year.

It's a taut, claustrophobic story that drops hints at a haunted landscape, at reservoirs of power and a deep, pent-up urge for revenge, denied over centuries until fertilised by blood, rage and fear. Andrew seem to become the vessel for that revenge which promises to pay his enemies back for what they did. The chosen tool is a second Andrew - always referred to simply as "Waggoner" - a creature who, or which, has an epiphany at the old hillfort and sets in motion a plan...

We're never quite sure - nor meant to be - whether Waggoner is "real" (and some kind of supernatural presence) or a projection of Andrew's rage. Others perceive them as one yet Waggoner seems to have motivations and a confidence that are very distinct form Andrew's. Indeed the struggle between them animates much of the story as, in that year, friendships are made and broken, pretended to and refused: as Andrew, very tentatively, becomes close to a girl: but above all as the chalk patterns of vengeance spiral round and begin to grip the school.

I loved - if you can use the word for such a dark book - the way Cornell blends the realities in this story. There is the world of the almost-adults in the school. Awful acts of bullying take place only a hairsbreadth away from adults who surely must know about them, surely ought to intervene. Yet it's as if everyone has fallen into another kingdom with different rules. In a sense that seems no more unlikely than an ancient tribe living behind a thin veil in a real hillfort, or a twin created for a dark and secret purpose. Then there's the curious world of the adults, with their own problems, of money, ageing and memories. And the two run in parallel, rarely intersecting. I wonder whether the need, the desire to read (and to write) fantasy taps into this double universes? We all know in our bones that there isn't one world but many, and exploring that through fantasy is less painful than facing it directly?

But it's not just Cornell's themes that resonated with me in this book. More than in anything else by him that I've read, he describes the world as I see (saw) it. The white line (you'll know it when you get to it!). The whole, arcane, teenage world of things that you aren't allowed to like and things that you must - Andrew anxiously runs through the current pop hits, desperate not to betray himself by liking, even by knowing about, the wrong things. Or, forced to pass an initiation test, he fails on banal questions about football managers. In other places he rages about not following sport or music because it's what the other kids are into. In a third rate private school out on the chalk of Wiltshire, deviance is severely punished by the other kids.

But what if you could punish them? The I recognised this thirst for revenge too - and part of me cheered Waggoner on as he delivers it, even as a greater unease grew. It seems more and more likely there will be collateral damage, that innocents will the drawn in...

I'd warn the reader that you may find - well I found - bits of this book difficult. There were times I had to put it down and breathe calmly - but I could never put it down for long. It is, simply, the best thing of Cornell's I've ever read. Buy it, read it.