Enjoying Nesbit.
Prompted by Case #2 in the current Osborne display, "The World Was All Before Them," I've just read E. Nesbit's Harding's Luck from 1923. This is a wild book! E. Nesbit is really the godmother of the middle grade novel and my biggest influence as a writer. This is a time travel novel, in which the hero travels back and forth between his time and the seventeenth century. The totally charming thing about Nesbit here, as elsewhere, is that she goofs around with the illusion of narrative with complete unconcern for the rules, jumping into the story when the spirit takes her.
Need to weave in some explanatory backstory? Here's Nesbit: "I hope you're not getting bored with all this? You see, I must tell you a little bit about the kind of boy Dickie was and the kind of way he lived, or you won't understand his adventures."
Want to seed some suspense? "Now you see that Mr. Beals may be a cruel, wicked man . . .or he maybe a really benevolent person. Well, you will know all about it presently."
Want to take the opportunity to promote your other books? "Now if you have read a book called "The House of Arden" you will already know . . . If you have not read that book, and didn't already know these things — well, you know them now."
I guess if we indulged in such hijinks now it would be post-modern. But with Nesbit it is just . . . jolly.
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