Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms – A Review

I’ve never reviewed a book on my blog before, but as I shut the covers of Katherine Rundell’s Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, I realized many of you who follow my blog would appreciate being introduced to this book. It’s middle-grade fiction. The author is a TCK who grew up between Zimbabwe, Belgium, and England; and the story, which takes place in rural Zimbabwe and London, is about a TCK.

I’m going to tell you why you should read it. That part will be spoiler-free. And then I want to explore what this book has to teach me as another TCK writer from Africa, and offer some criticism. Don’t worry, the border crossing between the Spoiler-Free Zone and the Spoiler Zone will be heavily patrolled. But I’ve done my best to communicate to the police that I don’t want them to extort you.

Publisher’s Synopsis

Wilhelmina Silver’s world is golden. Living half-wild on an African farm with her horse, her monkey, and her best friend, every day is beautiful. But when her home is sold and Will is sent away to boarding school in England, the world becomes impossibly difficult. Lions and hyenas are nothing compared to packs of vicious schoolgirls. Where can a girl run to in London? And will she have the courage to survive?

About the Author

Here’s what Katherine Rundell permits Simon & Schuster to say about her on their website:

Katherine Rundell is the author of Rooftoppers, Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner), and The Wolf Wilder. She grew up in Zimbabwe, Brussels, and London, and is currently a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She begins each day with a cartwheel and believes that reading is almost exactly the same as cartwheeling: it turns the world upside down and leaves you breathless. In her spare time, she enjoys walking on tightropes and trespassing on the rooftops of Oxford colleges.

How much of Katherine there is in Wilhelmina Silver—”Will,”—the electric main character, is her business, of course. But my own curiosity is a lesson to me. I am the first to support the privacy of fiction writers, but as a fellow TCK, I find myself playing at sleuth, trying to detect how much of the story was invention and how much of it based in her own life. There are hints in the video below (but also mild spoilers).

A TCK author’s fishbowl is made of magnifying glass.

 

You Should Read It!

Here’s what I love about the book:

• Rundell’s vivid, imaginative style
• The figurative language drawn from Africa instead of the West
• Characters who are not only original but told in an original way
• The warm, respectful portrayal of African characters
• Its artful corrective of a more famous “life on a farm in Africa” narrative, Out of Africa
• Will’s friendship with Simon and Daniel. I am a sucker for boy–girl friendship stories. I especially love that her best friend is Zimbabwean.
• The attempt at nuance in portraying a boarding school. This is no Miss Minchin’s Seminary for Young Ladies.
• The theme: the power of courage and perseverance to carve out happiness in the least likely circumstances

Most of all, I love Rundell’s powerful portrayal of the shock Will sustains. Rundell goes beyond simply showing us the many ways in which London was a whole new world for Will. She does not just describe culture shock. She crafts a series of events to show us that Will was not only happy and loved in Zimbabwe, but she was strong. She had a vitality and boldness and sincerity there that even her critics (minus Cynthia) recognized. For such a person to then find herself no longer fearless, but bewildered; no longer a protector, but bullied; no longer perceived as capable or intelligent, but inept and ignorant; and no longer a beloved member of a community, but a “disgusting” feral outcast, made this a more powerful cross-cultural transition story than others I have read.

I was moved; I have felt many of these reversals; and the deep sense of loss I continue to feel, looking back on a time when I felt strong is one of the locus points of my life.

I really respect Katherine Rundell for telling this story. She’s right. Courage can sometimes feel incredibly tremulous and, well, weak, but it’s precisely this kind of strength at the end of our rope that can take us back from the edge of despair.

 

 

——————–BORDER CROSSING to the SPOILER ZONE—————

Keep a sharp eye on your valuables. Get ready for a long wait. Name-drop if you can.

Can you tell most of the borders I’ve crossed were in West Africa? 😉

 

CANDID CRITICISM

I thoroughly love Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms yet also find it flawed in three ways.

I want to be clear: I am picking the book apart because it’s important to me. Most of the time I enjoy the books I read without worrying too much about the story structure, character consistency, etc., etc. But it’s different with Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms because this is the closest thing I have found to what I myself am writing.

I am taking notes because these are pitfalls I, too, have to watch for. I don’t know if I could do better, but I can at least pay attention.

1. Contrast

The first part of the book, set in Zimbabwe, is more enthralling than the second part, set in London.

Yes, it’s appropriate for the tone and writing style to adapt to the very different settings. Wilhelmina is enchanted by her home in Zimbabwe, and is very happy there. Her joy in her life sweeps you away as a reader. And her bewilderment when she finds herself in cold, drizzly London where no one understands her behaviour accounts for the less-than-ecstatic point of view in part two.

If it were just the change in settings and tone that were noticeable, that would only underscore Rundell’s ability. But it’s not. The quality of the prose changes. Her writing in the first part of the story is much more vivid and compelling. And the characters in Zimbabwe (apart from Cynthia) are so alive they make your head swim. There isn’t anything lacking in the second part except by contrast, but there you have it. The contrast is there.

I both admire Rundell for taking on the challenge of a cross-cultural transition story and find myself wistful for the story she could have written if she kept the plot to Zimbabwe.

2. Pacing

There is one way in which part two could be said to be stronger: the pacing. This book has a particularly drawn-out Act I. It takes ages to get to the Inciting Incident. I didn’t mind, because I really enjoyed being immersed in Will’s life on the farm. But I noticed.

There is more action once Will lands in London. The pace in the first half is appropriately African. The second half keeps time with the best clocks in London. This is more evidence that Rundell has a challenge on her hands. She is writing about two very different cultures. I like the contrast in the pacing—it feels true to life—yet it is still a story flaw.

On the one hand, you could say that the story moves quickly because life moves quickly in London. But Will’s internal clock has not adjusted yet, so this change of pace doesn’t quite work for the character. Will is an alert, observant person. Grief dulls our senses, but even when she is miserable, I expect Will to be sensitive to her surroundings if only to react to them. But the boarding school environment is described in broad strokes. The story does not pause for details. I wonder if this indicates that the author doesn’t have as many personal sensory experiences to draw on for this section.

3. Tropes

I put the first two flaws—the contrast between the settings and the change in pace—down to how difficult it is to write fairly about two very distinct cultures in the same book. When you take on a risky story, you won’t win every round.

But I can’t make good excuses for the tropes she uses. I find Rundell’s choices hard to swallow because in other respects she does such a great job turning stereotypes on their heads.

The worst one is the evil stepmother. In this book, she is the gold-digger Cynthia Vincy who marries Will’s guardian after the death of Will’s father. I am sure there are women as insufferable as Cynthia, whose baldfaced greed ruins the happiness of children. But why did Rundell settle on such an overused way of getting Will shipped off to boarding school?

Cynthia is a one-dimensional, static villain who only exists to create a convenient scenario in which Will can be forcibly relocated.

And then, of course, Wilhelmina’s dad has to die.

How else to get Will to London?

I don’t know. But please. There must be a way.

It’s not just that these are cliché; it’s that they are missed opportunities for nuance. How wonderful would it be to get a boarding school story where cruelty and neglect are not the motive for sending the child to the school? It would not be far-fetched at all for members of the community in Zimbabwe to convince Will’s guardian that if he had her best in mind, he would give her an English education. No need for evil Cynthia. Will’s dad could even have stayed in the picture, frankly. At some point, her doting father would have to start wondering if he’s really giving his daughter the opportunities she deserves. That conflict—Will’s convictions in conflict with those of the people who love her—would have made for a much better book.

I could even accept Cynthia if she were cast as a well-meaning person with traditional views on a young lady’s education.

I also disliked the final conversation between Miss Blake and Mrs. Robinson. It was so cliché I could hardly stand it. I love Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Little Princess, but the romanticization of Sara Crewe’s TCK outlook is not to the book’s credit. I really hated Angela’s syrupy praise of Wilhelmina’s purity of heart. Professional tiffs over student discipline, sure; but we don’t need a sermon about the innocence of a child nurtured by Mother Africa.

We, Africa’s children, are just humans like the rest of you. We TCKs are just human, too. We can celebrate the fresh perspective and the unusual strengths of a Wilhelmina Silver without turning her into a super-child.

I resent this so much because we TCKs are prone to exceptionalism. We have a hard enough time knowing ourselves as it is. We don’t need to be told we are special. We need to know we are seen and accepted.

Writer Takeaways

To sum up, here are the questions Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms raises for me as a writer.

1. Would it make for a stronger, more consistent and vibrant narrative if I kept my own stories to a West African setting?
2. If I want to write about people who move between worlds (which I might), what do I need to do to make sure my writing about other settings is as engaging as my writing about West Africa?
3. How can I avoid relying on plot gimmicks to help a Western audience follow a story which might not be believable to them (even if it is true to life)?
4. I want to give West African characters a stronger voice than I myself often had the ears to hear as a child. How will I do this when I did not have the kind of friendship myself that Wilhelmina had with Simon?
5. How can I write stories on African time for an audience on Western time?

I admit that I had moments, while reading her novel, where I felt a bit dismayed. There were times when Rundell’s choice of words or her figurative language were those I myself might use.

I have written and spoken before about the unfair advantage I have as a writer who grew up in such an “exotic” setting. I can be pretty lazy as a writer and still come off sounding original.

One of my fears is that I will not work hard enough for my words. I don’t want to coast. I don’t want to parade for show memories and experiences that had better be saved for the right moment.

I am really grateful to have read Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms because Rundell unknowingly pushes me to work harder. An “original” metaphor can, in a smaller circle, be cliché. Now I know there is at least one person who is ahead of me on the road. And I don’t underestimate her.

It’s not a competition. She doesn’t even know I exist—for good reason. But it’s a kind of stimulating intellectual company I haven’t had much of.