THERE IS A HAPPY LAND - Book review

Keith Waterhouse’s excellent debut novel There is a Happy Land was published in1957 and is narrated by an unnamed boy (‘Told her my name’ (p21)) of almost eleven years of age in the year before the Second World War.  As Waterhouse was born in 1929 there may be elements of autobiography in thisshort novel, perceiving the world from that childhood period: ‘Braithwaites’ (house) had been empty for ages. They had a telegraph pole in their garden. They were dirty. They had to have the bug-van when they removed’ (p16).

The boy lives with ‘my Aunty Bettie’ as both his parents are dead. His best friend is Ted – until they have a final falling-out. The interplay where they don’t speak and avoid eye-contact and befriend others is spot-on.

He befriends newcomer Marion Longbottom. ‘She knew a lot, did Marion. It was her that told me that if you swallow chewing gum, well it gets all tangled up round your heart, and if you swallow orange pips, well you get oranges growing out of your ears’ (p31).

The book title is from a song a lad sings: ‘There is a happy land, far far away/Where they have jam and bread three times a day./Just one big fam-i-lee,/Eggs and bacon they don’t see...’ (p38).

Waterhouse captures the mindset of childhood perfectly: ‘My heart always started bumping when people whispered at each other’ (p51).

Some of the older boys and girls would go off to the fields. ‘Suddenly I felt hot and sweaty and miserable and sick. All the whispers I didn’t understand, heard in the school lavatories and from the big lads, late at night at the top of our street, came back to my mind’ (p84).

He went to the fairground and won some coins. ‘I had five-pence now. I held the pennies tight until they were hot in my hand. I put my hand to my face and it smelled of copper. I was going to lick one and then I remembered Marion telling me that if you do, you get cancer’ (p100).

There is bullying and senseless fighting and annoying spitefulness. ‘... he used to get behind me and try to tread my heels heels down’ (p127).

For the narrator it is not a happy land, but it’s the best he has, despite being involved in a tragedy near the poignant end.