Kingdom by the Sea (Essential Modern Classics) (Collins Modern Classics)

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M. drives away with the dog and leaves Harry to his family, where he’ll have to “keep his own mouth shut, over all the years… before he got back to his kingdom by the sea. I hope that if he repeated his journey today he would find that things had changed since the 1980s and cycling would be considered viable. In the UK, he seems to like the Welsh the most, followed by sympathy for the Northern Irish, even though he loathes their religious fervor. Because he felt like a bomb himself, and if anyone did anything to him, he would explode into a million pieces and nobody would ever be able to put him back together again.

They hated them for eating raw fish, for working like dogs, and for torturing their prisoners during the war.The blurb talks of humour - I found none, unless sarcasm and condescension can be described as humour (and while tastes are different across the Atlantic, base sarcasm doesn't seem to be any more a form of acceptable humour there than it is in Britain). I wanted to like this book because I know my mum really loved it, but I just could not get into it at all. I can't imagine anyone not liking this book as it is such a good story and so well written and not just for kids / teens.

In a quiet way the British were hopeful, and because in the cycle of ruin and renewal there had been so much ruin, they were glad to be still holding on -- that was the national mood -- but they were hard put to explain their survival. Two brilliant points of white, lighting up a black landscape of greenhouse, sweet-pea trellises and cucumber-frames. Theroux speculates that it would be an impolite question in a place where so many people were on the dole. He begins by living under a boat on the beach at Newcastle for a few days, and eventually works his way up the coast to Lindisfarne--living hand to mouth, making it.I was a little surprised by some of the content - nothing happens, but there were a couple of “suggestive”scenes, so maybe not for young children. this has always been my favorite of Robert Westall's books, but I didn't appreciate it in as much *wholeness*, reading on and off and knowing what was coming, as I did the first time I read it. When the shadow reached him the sun would be gone, the world would turn grey, a cold breeze would blow.

He remembered the smashing blow as the ground hit his chin; the painful week after, not able to eat with a bitten tongue. He lay relaxed; as he remembered lying relaxed in his pram when he was little and watching the leaves of trees blowing, whispering and sunlit overhead. It was like the past in an old picture - empty trains, blackened buildings, bellicose religion, dirt, poverty, narrow-mindedness, trickery, and murder filling the scene. He did this in the summer of 1982, as the Falkland Wars raged, Prince William was born, and England was in throes of massive unemployment and labor unrest as Maggie Thatcher pushed through structural reforms with profound impacts on the deindustrializing country. The passenger explained that he heard about a signalman that liked to read, but his post was so remote that he had no access to books.And poor Mr M, so close to adopting Harry and finding happiness again, only to have it snatched away! The white faces of the Humphreys, who lived at number five, peered palely from the door of their shelter. I was most interested in the author’s travels through Scotland, although this is a small part of the book (only 4 chapters).

As the rescue team pull him alone out of the rubble, Harry realises he'll be sent off to live with moping, fussy Cousin Elsie - the last thing he needs on top of the shock of losing his family. And check this out--after his fight with the sea itself, which he wins (gets himself and his dog safe into the tower), it says: “The very air he breathed was full of salty spray, so that he breathed a mixture of air and water, half boy, half fish.This author has some serious issues going on that are causing him to have such a negative take on those around him and life in general. But his keen eye sees beyond the war hysteria to realize that Britain’s problem in 1982 was unemployed people and closed mines, factories, and businesses.