Sally Gardner must drive her publishers to distraction: no sooner have they worked out how to market one brilliant book than she delivers another that is just as brilliant, but totally different. All they can do is throw their hands up in despair, make sure the phrase “genre-busting” is prominent in the blurb, and wait for the inevitable prize shortlisting.
The Door That Led to Where is described as a “fast-paced mystery novel”, but that’s only the half of it. It is also part modern YA family story, part Dickensian saga and part time-travel fantasy, with a huge cast, a complex plot and a commentary on the failings of adults in their dealings with the kind of kids who – as Gardner put it in the dedication to her Costa- and Carnegie-winning 2012 novel Maggot Moon – “are overlooked at school”.
This book’s hero is definitely one of those. He is known as AJ. His mother is a horror: violent, abusive, and relentlessly critical of her son. And school is no sanctuary: for AJ it is a place full of sound and fury, where you are forced to learn stuff you’re not interested in. It’s no wonder he has only managed to get one GCSE. But it was in English lit, and he did achieve an A*, mostly because he had made a habit of bunking off school to go to the local library to read the classics, particularly Dickens.
His mum knows nothing about that, and thinks AJ is “a waste of space” who should have a job. She packs him off to her former employer, the Gray’s Inn law firm of Baldwin and Groat, and, much to his amazement, they agree to take him on as a trainee clerk. All is not as it seems, however. Hints of mystery abound, and, before long, AJ finds himself travelling between contemporary London and the London of 1830 in a search for the truth about his family’s dark past.
AJ’s mates Leon and Slim are sucked into the plot: both of them just as oppressed and misunderstood by the adults in their lives as AJ is, and both revealing talent, intelligence and courage in the face of adversity. The creator of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist would certainly have approved of these teenagers and their struggles to make something of themselves despite the poverty and prejudice they face. And the great Boz would have admired the portrayal of London.
There are a couple of flaws, but they are the Dickensian ones of superfluity and sudden transformation. Occasionally I felt that the story was just a little too stuffed with delights – as with Dickens, it can be hard to remember who all the minor characters are and where they fit in. I wasn’t entirely convinced, either, by the character arc of AJ’s mum towards the end of the story. It seemed a tad contrived.
None of that stopped me from enjoying it all enormously, though. There is one thing that is always the same in Gardner’s books, and it’s something you can’t buy: originality. Long may she continue to make life difficult for her publishers.
• Tony Bradman’s most recent book is Anzac Boys (Barrington Stoke). To order The Door That Led to Where for £4.99 (RRP £6.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
