Inspiring Older Readers
A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes
This is a book I’ve been aware of for what seems like the whole of my reading life but it’s constantly crept under my radar and I have never got around to reading it until now. And what a weird experience it was; not at all what I expected. I’m still not sure if it’s a brilliant direct hit or something that brilliantly misses the target but there is no doubt it’s a book you won’t forget in a hurry if you do read it.
At one level is an adventure story in a ripping yarns tradition about a group of children, separated from their parents, who find themselves making a sea journey from Jamaica that involves pirates, all sorts of jeopardy and an eventual reconciliation with their family in Britain. But that’s just the superstructure because the details are way, way darker than that might suggest. This is Swallows and Amazons collides head-on with Lord of the Flies. So the children have to experience death of a sibling, child abuse, adult exploitation, potential paedophilia, guilt, treachery and adult indifference. Quite a heady mix.
Literary critic, Michael Holroyd has observed that this is a book that is experienced differently by younger readers compared with how an adult interprets it and that this is appropriate because that is actually the author’s intention. In lots of ways this is a book about the central difference between the world of the adult and child. The way the child experiences the world, Hughes seems to be saying, is fundamentally different to how an adult sees it.
So, quite contrary to adult expectations, the children seem to be untouched by the tragedies that assail them – even death is absorbed and seemingly forgotten about, whether that’s an accidental fall or a panicky manslaughter. We are cut adrift here in a word of questionable and confused morality which Holroyd describes in this way:
“A High Wind In Jamaica takes no sides as it patrols the eccentric, sometimes amoral borders between a child’s and an adult’s natural territory.”
We live in a society today that refuses to acknowledge that children will encounter sexual behaviour or have desires of their own that they don’t really understand. So I expect that there may well be many readers who will find the implicit (and explicit) sexuality attributed to the girl children by the adults an uncomfortable aspect of the book. But it is, I think, central to Hughes’ objective of highlighting this impermeable boundary between the child and the adult. Emily, one of the younger girls, is repelled by the adult gaze and touch but the pirate captain is sexually attracted by her – the result of his approach, which is forcibly rejected by the young girl, is that both are seized with remorse but remorse for very different reasons. He hates himself for his desire but she hates herself for making him feel rejected and blames herself for the distance he then keeps from her. I guess it’s all a matter of speculation as to whether Hughes was trying to work out some of his own demons here.
I have been an academic in the field of working with children and young people for well over a decade and one of the issues we spend time talking about is how children deal with trauma and parental separation. While for some this can adversely shape their future lives there are others for whom it has significance but doesn’t dominate their lives and future decision-making – it’s about what gets labelled ‘resilience’. And I think that this is a part of what Hughes is trying to get to here – in a world in which adults and children see events and emotions so differently, we can’t always make adult assumptions about what the world looks like to the child.
I ended the book feeling hugely ambivalent: as I said at the start of this review, I’m utterly bewildered by it and I really need time to let it percolate through. Is this a brilliant, thought-provoking classic or a strange hybrid production that misses its mark? I genuinely don't know.
If you haven’t already, give the book a try because whether you think it’s a success or a failure you will certainly think it’s remarkable.
Terry Potter
March 2020