We need more tors in our lives!
After some more “adult” books, I want to take a look at a more YA book, The Norwood Tor by Michael Bradley, which was published in 1980. I can’t find much about Bradley on-line — there’s a writer named Michael Bradley, but he’s a current writer, so that doesn’t help, and there’s a controversial dude from about the same time named Michael Bradley, but I don’t know if it’s the same person. I can’t even find much about the book — it’s out there on used bookseller sites, but at one site, at least, they get the entire summary wrong, which is weird. Anyway, I got this book in a nice hardcover, probably new, so I would have been 9 or so when I got it, which makes me think my mother bought it for me, because I wouldn’t have been buying books when I was 9. My mom wanted me to read, and I liked reading, so there you have it. I haven’t read this book in over 30 years, but I read it a lot when I was but a yute, so re-reading it now, I remembered quite a lot of it.
Unlike some of the other books I’ve re-read in this series that are pitched to a younger audience (Ellen Raskin’s books and Danny the Champion of the World) and which I think are pretty groovy to read as adults, The Norwood Tor is much more for younger readers. It’s a horror/thriller book, so you’d think that adults would be fine with it, but it’s much more juvenile than some other YA books. It’s not a bad book by any means, but it’s definitely something for kids. I will say that I learned what a “tor” is from this book, which was nice.
Anyway, Jeremy Spiller, our protagonist, is a young kid who jumps a train because he’s trying to find his older brother, Paul, who ran away from home. The train he jumps happens to be a circus train, the owners of which just happen to be very connected to Jeremy’s brother. It’s a short book — 172 pages — so Bradley needs to get Jeremy together with the rest of the cast quickly! He meets Winnie, the wife of the owner, who seems a bit odd and has what seems to be psychic powers; Alf, Winnie’s husband, who’s a tough-sounding dude who keeps the circus ship-shape and Bristol fashion; Pyron, whose name implies his fire powers (never explained, which isn’t too big a deal, but I thought I’d mention it); Charley, an older kid who reminds Jeremy of his brother; Hugh, the circus giant; and Trago, the mysterious animal trainer. Jeremy digs Trago, because he’s interesting, but as an adult, we can see right away that Trago is really not a good dude, and he turns out to be the villain of the book. Trago tells stories about the evil Pyron and the addled Winnie, and Jeremy is far too ready to listen to him because he’s nice and he performs magic and is generally keen. Paul sent Jeremy letters, telling him about how great his life was, but things started getting worse, and his final letter, which is only a scrap in which he sounds like he’s in big trouble, is from the town of Norwood, which is where Charley tells him he’s going to go with Trago but to which Alf and Winnie always avoid taking the circus. It turns out Trago is going to take him to Norwood, but he is weak and needs help from both Charley and Jeremy, so they make sure he gets away. Things go pretty south from there, of course. Jeremy and his allies make it to Norwood, outside of which is the tor, where they confront Trago and Jeremy finds Paul, of course. Things get intense, people!
Reading this as an adult, as I mentioned, it’s not hard to see that Trago is the bad guy, and it’s also not hard to figure out who he is, but it’s still pretty keen how Bradley gets to the revelations. I do find it interesting that Bradley does not explain quite a lot of the book — he doesn’t really tell us too much about Trago, Pyron, and Winnie and how they do what they do, perhaps because the book is for kids and kids wouldn’t really understand what’s going on with them. The fact that Pyron has fire powers is enough, it seems, and I loved the book when I was a kid, so who’s to say he’s wrong? He builds the tension quickly, as Jeremy gets involved with the circus in the first few pages and falls in with Trago almost immediately, but it’s fine, because the plot keeps humming and Bradley does a decent job creating characterization on the fly. He does a nice job with the settings of the train and of the Norwood Tor, which is a wild, wooded place that becomes very creepy as Jeremy moves through it. Despite the fact that adult readers can see through Trago’s deal, Bradley does a good job making him fascinating and exotic, which would definitely lure in impressionable children. The pace of the book is speedy, as I noted, but Bradley does a good job keeping the reader interested. While I was re-reading it, it certainly wasn’t boring, despite some flaws in the narrative.
The biggest problem with the book is its lack of depth. I can deal with the coincidences in the plot — Jeremy jumps a train that just happens to be very linked to his missing brother? — but because it’s targeted to kids, it feels like Bradley skims over some things that he thinks kids might not dig. Trago, for instance, is definitely the villain, but it’s tough to point to what he does that’s so villainous. At the end, it’s heavily implied that he’s kidnapping these kids and drugging them, but at the same time, it’s unclear if he’s really doing that. Paul is clearly altered in some way, but again, Bradley skirts around what Trago actually does to them. Alf and Winnie and Pyron talk about him in negative tones, and through them, we get this idea that Trago is a villain, but it’s still a bit odd. Trago, according to Winnie and Pyron, represents chaos, but as an adult, it clearly seems that they’re afraid of Trago because Trago not only represents chaos, but anarchy — a breakdown of the social order — and they can’t abide that. Now, breaking down the social order is scary and might not be a good thing, but it’s also not necessarily the worst thing, and Winnie and Alf and Pyron don’t really justify why they’re opposing Trago and what he’s doing — they just assume everyone will be on their side. Granted, adults reading this book can see early on that Trago is kind of creepy — Bradley does not even hint at anything sexual, of course, but adults can see it’s there — but it’s also true that in an effort to remain kid-friendly and tense, Bradley ignores some fundamental things about Trago and those who oppose him that might make things a bit clearer. I guess he can’t do that for a YA book (and “young” YA, as well — this isn’t even really a book for a 17-year-old), but it does weaken it a bit when you read this as an adult.
I can’t really recommend reading The Norwood Tor as an adult — it’s fine and not unexciting, certainly, but it lacks the depth that adults tend to want in their fiction. If you know a younger teen, they might like it, but that’s about it. This is just another book in a long tradition of Young Adult Books, and there’s not a ton to make it rise above the others. But it’s fun enough. You can find it on Amazon, which is nice. It’s 28 bucks; when my mother got it for me, it cost $6.95. Inflation!
