A place for your heart

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Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell.
Faber & Faber, 2013.

A baby girl is found floating in a cello case after a packet boat sinks in the English Channel, La Manche. Rescued by the thoroughly eccentric Charles Maxim she is named Sophie and brought up in a rambling house in London. And all will apparently be well until officialdom in the person of the upright and stern Miss Eliot arrives.

Charles is soon deemed to be an inappropriate guardian and Sophie looks destined for an orphanage. But what if Sophie’s mother also survived the ship sinking? Is there a clue to be found in the carcass of the cello case?

Then begins a desperate search which will take the two fugitives, Sophie and Charles, to Paris where – as in London – a battle of wits and skills will take place between officious, sometimes corrupt adults and the pre-teen Sophie and her child-like yet wise guardian Charles.

Fin de siècle London, with horse-drawn cab.

Almost as soon as she could walk, Sophie could climb. She started with the trees, which are the quickest route to the sky. Charles came with her. He was not a ‘no-don’t, hold tighter’ sort of man. He stood underneath her and shouted. ‘Higher, Sophie! Yes, bravo! Watch out for the birds! Birds look wonderful from underneath!’

Chapter 3

This passion for climbing and for being brave stands Sophie in good stead when the pair go on the run to escape authority figures like Miss Eliot. Sophie has also to keep out of sight of the French authorities, which means that at night she ventures out onto the mansard rooftops of Paris, where she meets an urchin, Matteo, who teaches her the tricks of surviving off the ground and the skills of parkour before it was officially invented.

But the trip to Paris is to find out more about her mother’s cello-case – who made it and who owned it. Charles goes out every day to find out more, without apparent success – will the solution come from a speeded-up tune from Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem?

For its target audience this is an engaging story, about daring to be different, about attempting every ‘possible’ that comes one’s way, about believing you will find what you seek. Does Sophie find her cello-playing mother, and does she survive the sometimes brutal and frequently dangerous life under the sky? These are the questions that will draw young readers into the story despite, and sometimes because of, all the hardships it describes.

Rooftoppers has won many literary awards, but for this adult there are many harder to answer questions. When is this novel set? From the contemporaneous horse-drawn cabs and early motor-cars this seems to be set at the tail end of the Victorian period or in the early Edwardian age, though the author is never specific about this. Is it feasible that there’d be ‘sky’ urchins along with Paris street urchins? The author tells us she was inspired by periods she spent working in Paris and of trespassing on her Oxford college roof.

Young readers may relish the descriptions of Sophie’s existence, which swing from humorous episodes to quite visceral experiences, but I was more concerned with loose threads. I wanted to know what happened after the final page, how Sophie’s new friends reacted, how Charles shimmied up drainpipes with a cello on his back, how Matteo was motivated to learn English. I fear I may be forever disappointed but who am I to argue with its audience and the award committees? Especially when there are so many beautiful passages and bons mots like this:

Mothers are a thing you need, like air, she thought, and water. Even paper mothers were better than nothing; even imaginary ones. Mothers were a place to put down your heart. They were a resting stop to recover your breath.

Chapter 4

Gottlieb Daimler’s car in Paris, 1889

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The author’s voice is a distinctive one, and like her protagonist both fierce and independent. Her spirited and wonderful defence of children’s literature, Why You Should Read Children’s Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, was my first introduction to her work; and though I may be a little bemused by Rooftoppers I’m nevertheless looking forward to her other work