The Green Child by Herbert Read

“The assassination of President Olivero, which took place in the autumn of 1861, was for the world at large one of those innumerable incidents of a violent nature which characterise the politics of the South American continent. For twenty-four hours it loomed large in the headlines of the newspapers, but beyond an insinuation, the next day, that General Iturbide had formed a provisional government with the full approval of the military party, the event had no further reverberations in the outer world. President Olivero, who had arranged his own assassination, made his way in a leisurely fashion to Europe. On the way he allowed his beard to grow.”

 

I really wasn’t sure after that opening paragraph. Nicely written, but an Englishman rising to power in a South American country, faking his own assassination and returning to England? But I’m afraid I know little about South American politics that I haven’t learned through fiction. Maybe it happened, maybe it could have happened, I really don’t know.

I had two good reasons to continue:

• Graham Green provided a fulsome introduction. Not necessarily a sign that this would be the book for me, but definitely a sign of quality.
• Capuchin Classics, who have a lovely list full of books that I have either loved or aspire too, saw fit to reissue The Green Child earlier this year.

So on I went.

Olivero has escaped to the village in the English countryside where he was born. He wanders happily through places he remembers well, until he sees something very strange:

“The stream as he remembered it – and he could remember the pressure of its current against his bare legs as he waded among its smooth, flat pebbles – ran in the direction of the station from which he had just come. But now, indubitably, it was flowing in the opposite direction, towards the church.”

He follows the stream to a mill, where he finds a pale and fragile woman held captive by a brutish man. Olivero is drawn to the woman, recognising as the subject of many local tales. The Green Child.

Olivero rescues the Green Child from her captor and tells her his story.

And it is here that the story takes a sharp turn – from a lovely fanciful country tale to a gentle political satire.

The young Olivero set out from his home to seek his fortune and, almost passively, travelled along a very strange road from messenger boy to dictator.

Fanciful in a very different way. It was readable, but I read hoping that it wouldn’t be too long before the older Olivero and the Green Child reappeared. And eventually they did.

The Green Child drew Olivero into her own world below the mill-pond. 

Both are welcomed into the community, where life is ordered around a progression : from the pleasures of youth, through the pleasure of work , through the pleasure of opinion and argument, to the final pleasure of solitary thought.

And so I found myself in a dystopian tale

Olivero makes his journey towards what he comes to realise he had always been seeking, and eventually to the end of his life, when he is absorbed into the rocks that form the foundation of the world.

A very different kind of strange. And not my kind of strange I’m afraid.

The Green Child is a novel in three very different acts. And for me, although there was some lovely writing and much food for thought, the book didn’t come together as a whole.

Maybe a little more background knowlege would have helped.

I’m still thinking about the book, but it still has me confused.

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