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mrstephenconnor 's review for:
The Explorer
by Katherine Rundell
Four children - Fred, Con, Lila and Max - find themselves stranded in the depths of the Amazon after their plane crashes.
The first half of the book is all about the dynamic of the group - the leaders, the helpful, the painful, the stubborn - and each character is vividly written. Fred is a doer, a boy who wears his cricket jumper with pride and thinks about what his father would say and do; Con is a complicated girl with multiple layers to her personality. She can appear stubborn, angry and cynical, often all within one sentence, but shows her childish love for life at other points. Lila is the mother figure of the group, not least because she looks after her younger, slightly annoying brother, Max.
They survive through a mixture of luck and opportunism - then they stumble across the explorer. What a wonderful character this man is. I picture him acted by Charles Dance, all stiff upper lip and correctness, a sharp tongue allied to a sharper temper, not to mention a wonderful way with words ('I'll cut off your ears and give them to the vulture to wear as a hat' is one of my favourite throwaway lines). He teaches the children more than they ever thought as their adventure unfolds.
Simply put, a wonderful story. It's not too much to say you can feel yourself in the jungle with the gang, and the explorer character is just fantastic. Katherine Rundell is such a fine writer that it brings both admiration and envy.
Have I mentioned the explorer is brilliant?
The first half of the book is all about the dynamic of the group - the leaders, the helpful, the painful, the stubborn - and each character is vividly written. Fred is a doer, a boy who wears his cricket jumper with pride and thinks about what his father would say and do; Con is a complicated girl with multiple layers to her personality. She can appear stubborn, angry and cynical, often all within one sentence, but shows her childish love for life at other points. Lila is the mother figure of the group, not least because she looks after her younger, slightly annoying brother, Max.
They survive through a mixture of luck and opportunism - then they stumble across the explorer. What a wonderful character this man is. I picture him acted by Charles Dance, all stiff upper lip and correctness, a sharp tongue allied to a sharper temper, not to mention a wonderful way with words ('I'll cut off your ears and give them to the vulture to wear as a hat' is one of my favourite throwaway lines). He teaches the children more than they ever thought as their adventure unfolds.
Simply put, a wonderful story. It's not too much to say you can feel yourself in the jungle with the gang, and the explorer character is just fantastic. Katherine Rundell is such a fine writer that it brings both admiration and envy.
Have I mentioned the explorer is brilliant?