Photo: The cover of 'The Mouse and his Child'.
The Mouse and His Child
By Russell Hoban
What are we, Papa?’ the toy mouse’s child asked his father.
‘I don’t know,’ the father answered. ‘We must wait and see.’
A clockwork mouse and his son come into awareness of themselves and the world as they are placed on a display shelf in a toy shop. When wound up, the father lifts the son up and down, walking in an endless circle.
Sold to an anonymous family who only reach them out at Christmas, they spend five years in that home until they are broken and thrown into the rubbish. A disaster, perhaps, but also an opportunity: the son has an innate, driving desire for both a family and a safe home, and this comes to define their quest, inspiring their very personal journey into selfhood. Along the way there are hair-raising and heart-warming adventures, taking in vicious rats, gnomic frogs, belligerent shrews, and even a dormouse theatre critic, among many others.
The mice are initially patched up so that they can walk in a straight line by a watchful, wise tramp. Unable to repair them perfectly, he sets them by the roadside (‘Be tramps!’), with the potential to move forward, and so they are ready for their adventure, and are literally off the blocks. Their adventure is epic; the truths found along the way universal.
‘A long, hard road,’ said the Father to the Frog. ‘That was what you saw ahead for us, was it not?’
‘All roads, whether long or short, are hard,’ said Frog. ‘Come, you have begun your journey, and all else necessarily follows from that act. Be of good cheer. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. The world lies before you.’
The US author Russell Hoban’s career saw intense cult success with such titles as Riddley Walker (arguably his greatest work) and Turtle Diary. Before the acclaim of these works, Hoban was an able children’s book illustrator (some critics considered his art to be precise rather than sympathetic), which led to his first iteration as a writer, crafting memorable children’s tales, perhaps the most significant of which is The Mouse and His Child.
I first learned of this book when reading Hoban’s 2011 obituary and finally received it as a birthday gift this year (things sometimes take quite a time, as you’ll see if you read this book). Frankly, I’m staggered that I had never come across it before. I enjoyed its sharp retort to the saccharine platitudes of so much children’s writing. If Kenneth Grahame had sat down and idea-stormed over a bottle of fine red wine with Muriel Spark and CG Jung, they might have come up with a book like this. Talking animals and toys, mixing up the cute with the sinister, discover themselves, and the world around them, with equal measures of bright delight and jolly horror. In many ways it mirrors how life is full of the oxymoronic epiphany that theologian HA Williams refers to as ‘the warmth and sweetness and dryness and terror of actual living’.
‘When I read Hoban, I feel that he is someone who has ventured out past where the streets peter out, through fields blasted by blight, on into the dark, dank forests that rustle and shudder.’
Hoban lived a rich and chequered life. Art studies at Temple University were disrupted by world war two, in which he served with some distinction. Then came the gradual evolution as illustrator, children’s author, and darkly challenging, creatively singular novelist, with sharp, jarring bumps along the way. He and his first wife, the writer and illustrator Lillian Aberman Hoban, had four children together before their marriage ended. The same year he married Gundula Ahl, going on to have three children with her. Both in times of peace and war, it seems that Hoban experienced his share of challenge and conflict.
This is echoed in the sequences of rapacious shrews streaming hither and thither in search of territory and food. The way in which they arrogantly sweep up anything for their own use echoes the harsh reality wrapped within the adage that an army marches on its stomach. The tiny little scrappy soldiers boast excitement that some, in truth, feel less than others.
When I read Hoban, I feel that he is someone who has ventured out past where the streets peter out, through fields blasted by blight, on into the dark, dank forests that rustle and shudder. He shoulders a light pack with a little food, water, perhaps a change of clothes – but no map. He goes out beyond our sight as we watch under the flickering streetlights. After a time, perhaps long, perhaps short, he returns and writes down all that he has seen and heard and thought and felt, honestly and nakedly.
That is one of the reasons why I feel moved to share this children’s classic with Friends: the unsentimental and startling view of both what lies out there and what lies within had me gasping in surprise and admiration.
Hoban’s obituarist ended his piece remembering picnics during which Hoban would often sit quietly, slightly apart, watching the skyline: ‘…one felt, seeing him gaze at the view across London, that what he saw was the end of the world.’ I’m certainly not looking forward to the end of the world, but it doesn’t hurt to remember that the buildings of civilisation contain rubble.
Father and son work their way out from the town, through meadow and pond, forest and woodland. There are adventures and setbacks aplenty, including: being coerced into assisting in the robbery of a wildlife bank; time spent with an experimental forest theatre company, where audience feedback includes certain animals being eaten; and time spent motionless at the bottom of a pool, tarnishing while the son contemplates their situation. In each of these situations and others, good and bad arrive holding hands. Over their months in the pool, the son comes to some sort of deeper understanding of their situation, finally innovating a way up and out.
The miniature odyssey of how these characters search for, and find, their family, and a home of their own, features death, sudden triumph in the face of incredible odds, and surprising character reversals, which feel entirely convincing within context. All the time, Hoban suggests that the mice’s experiences, whether good or bad, are an opportunity for discovery, be that about themselves or the world.
Shortly before a key confrontation, the day dawns thus: ‘“Morning,” said the town clock, “For good or ill, this day begins,” and it gravely struck the hour.’
Jung commented: ‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’ That is certainly the narrative of the mouse family here, with all of the uncertainty that implies. Quakers seek with less or greater success to turn to the light and to worship within its nurturing glow. We are also aware of the ambiguous interplay between light and shadow, across the world, between people and within every human. I’m not offering this book to Friends because it features physical violence and conflict, but rather because of its bracing acceptance of ambiguity and the inevitability of conflict – whether that be with others or ourselves. This book has a salty savour, and I urge Friends young and old to taste it.
