Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 52
A Nature Book Reader
JIMI GOODWIN
Jimi Goodwin is a singer in a band and a frustrated hip hop overlord
The Runaways by Victor Canning
I refound and rejoiced in these
books again after research
on the net a few years back.
Along with Kes , which I still
vividly remember getting for
my ninth birthday, alongside
a pair of cheap binoculars,
this was the first nature
fiction that I encountered.
The Runaways was the first
in Victor Canning’s Smiler
trilogy which followed
the adventures of teenage
runaway Samuel Miles. Other
books in the series were The
Flight of the Grey Goose and
lastly The Painted Tent. This
first book sees Smiler wrongly
accused and convicted of
mugging an old lady in his
native Bristol and deals with
his escape from reform school.
His dream is to make his way
to Southampton to meet his
dad, a merchant seaman,
when his ship comes back
to port, to help him clear
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his name. That isn’t for nine
months so Smiler, only 14, has
to survive until then and keep
out of the authorities’ reach.
He hitches and walks
and ends up near Salisbury
Plain where he hides in a
barn. At the same time as
Smiler escapes so does Yarra,
a young female cheetah from
Longleat Safari Park. It’s a
little 1950s “Gosh, thanks
Mr!“ in places but some of the
writing and his descriptions
of wild animals and nature are
really moving and whenever
I’m down or want to regress
and try and reclaim some
innocence these books do it
for me.
Further Reading
Kes by Barry Hines
The Observer Book
of British Birds
