There are many reasons why The Song of Seven should not work as a book for children. The most significant is that it lacks a child protagonist; although there is a 10-year-old boy at the centre of the story, its hero is a young schoolteacher, Frans van der Steg. Add in a labyrinthine conspiracy, some metafictional comment on reality, identity and storytelling, a delayed central plot-strand and several matter‑of-fact references to corporal punishment, and it seems certain that disaster will result. Yet, somehow, in a hurdy-gurdy way, it hangs together. It does not boast the breakneck pace of The Letter for the King, Tonke Dragt’s world-renowned 1962 heroic fantasy, a big success for Pushkin when it was translated into English in 2013; rather, it draws the reader seductively along its spiralling paths.
Its author, now an elderly Dutch national treasure, wrote her first book at the age of 12, in a Japanese internment camp in Jakarta. She went on to study art at The Hague, and illustrated both her own work and that of others, including E Nesbit and Alan Garner. Her stories occupy a similar space to theirs, straddling the divide between mundane life and fantasy. Translator Laura Watkinson has faithfully served Dragt’s work: the language of all three of her books published by Pushkin is beautifully lucid, with a clear sense of playfulness and urgency.
Initially at least, The Song of Seven operates in a more realistic context than Dragt’s earlier books, which were set in a fictional medieval world governed by chivalric rules. Here, the action opens in a small village in the 60s, where a bored class waits hopefully for Mr Van der Steg to tell a hero tale of his other self, the legendary Frans the Red. Too tired to oblige them, he claims, falsely, that he is waiting for a response to an important letter. And once at home he finds that a mysterious letter is awaiting him; apparently, he will soon be taken to meet the writer, whose signature is flourishing but illegible. Sure enough, he finds himself swept away in an old-fashioned coach to a clearing in the woods, cryptically called Sevenways, though its signpost has only six arms.
In bewilderingly swift succession, Frans encounters the sullen Biker Boy and his alter ego Roberto; the magician Mr Thomtidom who lives in a bungalow behind a tent, behind the façade of a large house called “Appearance and Reality”; and Aunt Rosemary, a herbalist. From them, he learns of 10-year-old Geert-Jan, imprisoned by a wicked uncle in the mysterious House of Stairs until he finds the treasure described in the prophecies of the Sealed Parchment. To save Geert-Jan, and help him fulfil his quest, Frans must be initiated into the Conspiracy of Seven, become the boy’s tutor – and find and travel all the seven ways. But who are Greeneyes, Greensleeves and Greenhair? And how are the prophecies’ conditions to be met?
It’s strangely refreshing to see the action of a children’s story from the perspective of a harassed, sometimes self-doubting adult mentor, who feels guilty when he dodges a grammar lesson, rather than that of a child whose only concern is to evade grownup scrutiny and get on with the business of adventure. As the title suggests, music is a critical part of the book’s structure, with the eponymous song glimmering throughout the story like a thread of gold; the children at Frans’s school sing it, the chapter headings reflect the verses, and it ultimately proves the solution to all Geert-Jan’s – and Frans’s – problems. In fact, the book itself is like a song, or incantation; a wandering, winding ballad with occasional joyous percussion, to the spell of which the reader can’t help but succumb.
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