The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, by Gene Kemp

[rachelmanija]

What did the cross-eyed teacher say?

"I can't control my pupils."

All the chapters start with this kind of kid joke, which is something Tyke loves. Tyke Tiler is a mischievous, athletic kid whose best friend is Danny, who has a severe speech impediment and a learning/developmental disability.

The ostensible plot is that Danny is going to be sent to a different school unless he can pass a test, but mostly it's an episodic story about two kids raising hell and being loyal to each other. The tone is similar to the William books by Richmal Crompton, if anyone's read those, but less farcical. It's fun.

I had a very weird experience reading this book. Since I knew there was a big twist, the instant I read the back cover, I was positive that Danny and Tyke were the same person.

Spoiler: Danny and Tyke are absolutely not the same person, as is extremely obvious almost immediately, but I was so convinced they were that I kept thinking up absurd explanations for why teachers might address them by two different names and people talk about them to each other.

Eventually I decided that they had to be separate people, and the twist would actually be some kind of cement truck tragedy.

Spoiler: There is no cement truck tragedy.

So I stopped looking for a "it was this all along" type of twist, except for a brief interlude in which I was absolutely convinced that Tyke had been dead all along due to a mention of joining Tom, who is very much alive but whom I misremembered as being a long-dead soldier.

Spoiler: Tyke is not dead all along.

As two of you clever readers guessed, the twist is that...



Tyke is a girl. Not a girl disguised as a boy, just a girl whose best friend is a boy, who has an androgynous nickname, and who doesn't conform to gender stereotypes. In general, no one has a problem with this.

No one ever calls her a boy or, in retrospect, does anything to indicate gender one way or another. The only reason readers assume she's a boy is what they bring to the book: either all the other books they've read starring characters like Tyke in which they're always boys, or their own assumptions about what girls can be like or whether girls and boys can be friends. It's very neatly done with zero preaching.



So that was a surreal reading experience. If you ever want one for yourself, take any random book which is primarily about the relationship of two people, and start reading it under the impression that they are either the same person, or one of them is a ghost.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

That sounds like a fascinating reading experience and I'm almost sad that I can't reproduce is, now that I know Tyke and Danny ARE two separate people.

I don't think I've ever had this exact experience, but I know there have been books where I went in convinced that they were genre X and became VERY confused (and sometimes alarmed) as the evidence mounted that they were genre Y... Of course I can't remember any titles right now. I know this sometimes happens to people who go into, say, Wuthering Heights expecting romance by the modern definition.

[sixbeforelunch]

I know this sometimes happens to people who go into, say, Wuthering Heights expecting romance by the modern definition.

I did this. Sort of. As a wee X-Files fan, I heard the song lyric "American Heathcliff, brooding and comely" in the song David Duchovny by Bree Sharp and ran out to read Wuthering Heights. I was expecting to fall in love with Heathcliff the same was I was in love with Mulder at the time. It...did not work out for me that way.

[swan_tower]

I wound up annoyed by Freedom and Necessity because of this. The back of the book promises a "magical conspiracy;" it would be more apt to say there is an occult conspiracy, i.e. something involving a secret society doing occult things, but not the overt fantasy I kept expecting and not getting. I loved so much else about that book, waiting for something that was never going to come ended up grating like a rather sharp pebble in my shoe.

[copperfyre]

I managed to read an entire historical mystery novel absolutely convinced that it’s twist was going to be that the main character was a vampire. This did not turn out to be the case, it was an entirely un-supernatural historical murder mystery, but I was going “okay so now he reveals he’s a vampire?” up until about the last ten pages. I ended up with this mistaken impression because I’d thought a vampire book loving friend had recommended it to me (they had not) and because the book spends a long time dwelling on the main character’s ‘unnatural yellow eyes’, and ‘unsettlingly sharp senses’, and ‘unbelievably fast reflexes’ which all fit my vampire narrative. I was very disappointed when no-one turned out to be a vampire.

[el_staplador]

Hahaha, yes, that would be weird!

Interestingly, I don't remember experiencing that as a twist, though I assume I did at the time. But in my head of course Tyke is a girl, she's always been a girl. I've never reread it, though.

[rmc28]

I vividly remember the twist, and the sheer revelation that I had brought that assumption and the author had let me. It must be at least 30 years ago, so it certainly stuck with me!

[sabotabby]

Oh! That's actually cool.

[asakiyume]

It was fun reading this and seeing all your guesses foiled. And the book itself seems really sweet (in a non-cloying way).

[rachelmanija]

It is sweet.

[wpadmirer]

I am really amused by your ideas for what the twist was going to be.

What a lovely twist it turned out to be!

[princessofgeeks]

Hee!

Did you read the middle grade book "The Mark of Conte"?

[rachelmanija]

No, never heard of it. Does that also have a gender reveal?

[naomikritzer]

I remember this title but nothing about the book.

[cyphomandra]

I loved Mark of Conte! (or Conte Mark) Especially when his projects get increasingly elaborate as he attempts to make them fulfill multiple requirements (I think he ends up sleeping in a pyramid?)

[sovay]

The only reason readers assume she's a boy is what they bring to the book: either all the other books they've read starring characters like Tyke in which they're always boys, or their own assumptions about what girls can be like or whether girls and boys can be friends.

I would love to know if this effect works with generations of later readers, who may have been trained differently by other kinds of book.

[rachelmanija]

Me too. It completely fooled me, partly because in addition to thinking there would be a completely different type of reveal, I had also thought the book had been written much earlier than it actually had been.

[naomikritzer]

It reminds me of that "brain teaser" of my childhood, you know: a man and his son are driving somewhere and have a terrible accident. The man is killed and his son is gravely injured. The child is rushed to the hospital and into surgery and the surgeon comes out and looks down and says, "I cannot operate on this boy, he is my son." How is this possible?

Kids these days are really confused that this is a puzzle. The answer is supposed to be "the surgeon is his mom," but sometimes they go with, "the surgeon is the other dad."

[swan_tower]

Oh hey! That is actually what I would have guessed if I hadn't seen your post when I was on my phone (I hate typing a lot on my phone), except I would have also thought the book was too early for that kind of thing -- mostly because I assumed the book would have to use pronouns for Tyke, which either gives away the twist or indicates as trans. But it sounds like it just dodges the pronouns?

[rachelmanija]

The book itself is in first person.

[daidoji_gisei]

Tyche was the ancient Greek goddess of chance, similar to the Roman Fortuna. I wonder if that is what inspired the writer’s choice of name.

[el_staplador]

It's British slang, means something like 'rascal'.

[likeadeuce]

I remember as a k8d being very intent on unraveling the sex of a first person narrator and being disoriented when I guessed wrong (i do think I settled the narrator of the Great Brain books as a girl and would get confused the character was referred to as John but then i would be like 'in the old days were girls called John?' I did eventually accept it but I think I related to that character and wanted him to be a girl.

By the way this whole setup makes me think of Taylor Swift's song 'Betty,' a story song in which the first narrator sings to Betty about a convoluted high school romance for 2 verses and 2 double choruses and then halfway through the third verse someone addresses the narrator as 'James' at which point all right thinking people are like TWO LATE, TAY, THIS IS A GAY SONG AND YOU KNOW WE KNOW IT!!

[sholio]

I am fascinated that most of us were wrong, and also really intrigued by the twist! I'm pretty sure I've hit that specific form of "gotcha!" at least once in adult fiction as well, although I don't remember what book it was .... though I do remember vaguely that I guessed very early and was annoyed that the book treated it as a big reveal when I had figured it out as soon as I noticed the book was dodging pronouns. However, I wasn't distracted by thinking that one of the characters was unreal or dead, which sounds like an extremely unique reading experience!

[rachelmanija]

It was so hilarious in retrospect.

I pretty much always enjoy "she was disguised as a man all along" reveals. This one was unique in that there was no disguise, either by the character or in any obvious way by the author. It's first person and you're completely free to assume a gender or not.

[frith_in_thorns]

I confess, it was totally the "award-winning" which tipped me in the direction of guessing Dead All Along, as for some reason I remember reading quite a lot of books with things like that on the cover where that was the case, or someone died tragically halfway through! I'm glad to know it won an award for more cheerful reasons!

[kerrypolka]

Ahhh, this reminds me of the time I read a book saw while browsing at the library, and grabbed and checked out knowing that I had heard good things about it -

You know, that book, it’s about two sisters, and it’s narrated in first person by the youngest sister, and there’s the word “Castle” in the title, and it’s set in rural England, or maybe New England? And it’s about these two sisters, and their life in a big sprawling house and their - dad? uncle? - and the youngest sister is a little ‘quirky’ but it becomes evident across the book and her narration that there’s something deeper going on with her…. but (I thought I remembered from the recommendation I’d heard) it’s a nice light coming-of-age story with a bit of whimsy and romance and some mild underage drinking, some adventures are had and it all turns out right in the end?

Yeah, I read the other one.

[rachelmanija]

OOPS.

[carbonel]

Ever since I read Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, I've been suspicious of missing pronouns.

On the other hand, Sarah Caudwell gets away with it, because the ambiguous-gender character in those books is the first-person narrator.

[rachelmanija]

This also has a first-person narrator.

[primeideal]

So I often find myself browsing the wikipedia homepage when I'm bored at work, and the twist in this book was listed as a "Did You Know?" for recently added/significantly expanded articles the other day. :D Thanks for the writeup!