Julia Cunningham, Dorp Dead

[rachelmanija]

Isn't that a great title?

This is a very short children's book, first published in the 1960s and recently reprinted. It's about a genius orphan boy who refuses to learn to spell because that would be conformist and let people know he's a genius. It is set in a vague, symbolic, and slightly surreal time period and location. The boy gets adopted by a vaguely, symbolically, and surreally evil man, meets a vaguely, symbolically, and surreally good Hunter, and makes his vague, symbolic, and surreal escape.

Obviously, this book did not work for me. I could not get over the hero's voice sounding totally unlike an actual boy, even though it's written retrospectively. Also, since he was supposedly a genius, I would have liked to see him do something unusually intelligent occasionally rather than merely being clever with language, which one expects in a published book anyway.

However, since it has been reprinted with an afterword, I gather that some people rate it much higher than I do. Apparently it was groundbreakingly dark for its time. (Was it really?)

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I gather that some people rate it much higher than I do.

The effect of memory-haze: books read in childhood often are remembered as much much better than they were.

I do remember that this book did not work for me either, though, as a child, so it could be that the fond memories are those of editors and literary agents who had great hopes...

Apparently it was groundbreakingly dark for its time. (Was it really?)

Sort of. Paul Zindel (The Pigman, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds) and SE Hinton (The Outsiders) had started the dark-YA ball rolling but Judy Blume hadn't happened yet. (I believe we were also pretty short on the I-have-cancer-and-my-dog-died-when-my-drunk-father-beat-it genre, whatever that's called.)

Compared to Zindel and Hinton and their cohort, I do not think Dorp Dead was groundbreaking. It was just one of that kind of book.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I must have read it sometime in the early to mid eighties, and I remember being told how "dark" it was.

I think, though, if I am parsing my memories correctly, that the "darkness" I was warned about was more about the protagonist's nonconformist attitude than it was about the external events.

I liked it--and retain a fondness for it in my memory that has nothing to do with wanting to read it again--because it was "dark" without being drearily realistic, and there were very few of those books available.

I can think of two others, actually. The Witches of Worm (Zilpha Keatley Snyder), and The Silver Crown (Robert C. O'Brien).

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I don't have any really clear memories of the book, except that I did read it and found it very dark, very interesting, very moving, and nothing I ever wanted to read again.

[amberdulen.livejournal.com]

Oh my GOSH. I remember this! Now I want to go read it again, because I'm not sure I understood what was going on at all.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I read it when it came out, and thus was the right age group. I loved it because of its nonconformity--there was so much Five Little Peppers etc. However, once I'd read it I had no wish to read it again, though that might have partly been because my best friend at the time seriously disapproved of the attitude of the book, and scorned me for a long time for liking it.