This is a book which deals in history, time-travel, murder, intrigue
and missing persons. It is also a book
about identity – the importance of knowing who you are and where you come
from. Most of all, it is a book about
the importance of work – and being given the chance to do something with your
life.
AJ Flynn and his friends Slim and Leon are only 16 years
old, but they have already been more or less written off as worthless and
irredeemable. Raised by inadequate
parents in broken families on a grim housing estate, they have inherited a
modern London which has little use for them.
They are the boys in “hoodies”; obscured, undifferentiated and up to
trouble, no doubt. Their lives have barely
begun, but their futures already seem hopeless.
The novel begins with a sharp dig at a society which rates a person by
their exam results: “You will never
amount to anything, AJ Flynn. Not with
one GCSE.”
The motif of magical doors is central to the plot. A door is the device by which AJ travels back
into the past, back to London in the 1830s.
Unsolved mysteries are there; missing people are trapped there. AJ alone has the power to keep the door
opened or closed; and yes, you can read that as a metaphor. Doors are literal and symbolic both – and simultaneously. When AJ is given the opportunity of a job
interview, his whole life – both past and future – hinges upon that door. “He wondered if by going through the door
that led to Baldwin Groat’s chambers he had altered everything. He had gone in jobless, hopeless and nameless,
and come out with a job, a glimmer of hope and a name he’d never heard before.”
(p. 12-13)
A door is not the freshest symbolic device, but Sally
Gardner makes good use of it. She is a
writer with a rich imagination and talent for mashing up genres. London appears, as both vivid setting and
varied character, in the majority of her novels – and this is doubly true of The
Door That Led to Where. I,Coriander takes place on London Bridge as England sways precariously
between the rule of Royalists and Puritans.
In The Red Necklace, a young gypsy boy travels between London and
Paris as a first-hand witness to the French Revolution. In all of these novels, history is liberally
laced with magic – a fresh surprise for readers who think of history as a dry
and dusty thing. From cataclysmic
historical events come phoenix opportunities . . . perfect for a young character
who has the imagination and courage to fashion his or her life into something
new.
Gardner is a writer who consistently champions the underdog. Perhaps her best-known novel is Maggot Moon, which won the Carnegie Medal in 2013. This dystopian story is about a young boy,
Standish Treadwell, who exposes a huge lie in the totalitarian state described
as the “Motherland”. Readers with an
awareness of history will catch parallels to the Nazi regime and Cold War
schemes, but the setting of the book is original – and wholly in the fantasy
realm. Standish has mismatched eyes and
a dyslexic brain; the whole point is that he sees things differently from most
other people, and this is both advantage and disadvantage in a society that
demands compliance and conformity. Like
the author, who has spoken openly about her struggles with dyslexia and
mainstream education, Standish has been written off and marginalized. But people who are at the margins, unnoticed
and ignored, also have a power – and this is a theme that Gardner returns to
again and again.
Although AJ Flynn has largely "failed" in the exam system, he has self-educated himself through a love of reading. At first, the library was just a safe and quiet haven from his chaotic home life; later, he discovers the power of books. His knowledge of Dickens gets him noticed at his first job interview, when lack of confidence and the wrong clothes would have sunk him. Not everyone has a "Jobey's Door" to time-travel through, it's true, but books provide a door of sorts . . . the author definitely makes that point.
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@Barrie Summy
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy
