I'll Go My Own Way
Style: Good
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Age Range: Mid Teens
Period: Contemporary
Genres: Growing-Up
Synopsis:
Cat McPrie, daughter of a Travelling family, is trained by her father in the ways of poaching &c. since her mother is unable to have more children. This she does in spite of the prejudice against girls following their fathers. She grows up within her family and the community of travellers and faced with the hostility of townspeople.
Notes:
A book which allows one to see through the eyes of a traveller or tinker, while distinguishing them clearly from gypsies or just layabouts. The family is a very strong unit, and the community of travellers, although loosely based, tending to occasional chance meetings, is close-knit, not least because of prolific intermarriage. The morality portrayed owes more to the natural law than to theology, but is sound for the most part: modesty/decency plays a particular part when the girls are forced to attend school and walk out of a biology lesson, and mention is made of God in a positive, if rather folkloric, sense. The idea of individual property is scorned somewhat by way of justifying poaching, but the overall moral sense is sound.
Tuesday 1st January 2002