All the world is wild and waiting

October, October by Katya Balen

October is the best month when you live in the woods and maybe when you don’t, but I wouldn’t know.

Katya Balen

Eleven-year-old October lives happily off-grid in the woods with her father, an exultant, wild existence that is crowned when she rescues and rears an orphaned barn owl chick, which she names Stig.

But when Dad has a serious accident, everything changes.

Balen’s storytelling is terrific. October’s first person narrative makes the events vivid and immediate, a stream of consciousness which widens into a river of experience as the tale unfolds. Plot twists are supple and lithe, and October’s development — as her whole life alters beyond her recognition or control — is well-paced and believable.

Given our compassionate understanding of her previously quiet, near-solitary life, that control element is key, because (continuing a theme close to Katya Balen’s heart) October is autistic. She cannot endure loud noises, bright lights or crowded places, but loves books and has a rich imagination, escaping into fantasies that supplant reality. She is extremely literal in her concepts, delightfully trenchant on the banal illogicality of ‘normal’ life, but prone to uncontrolled outbursts.

[Dad] looks up and he says we need to get Stig some mice or some chicks and my stomach scrunches because I’ve already thought about this and I don’t know how to help. But Dad is standing up and getting the keys to the Land Rover and he says give your face a quick wash because we’ll have to go to the pet shop and I shriek because you can’t feed someone’s pet to an owl and because I don’t want to leave Stig. But Dad looks at me and he says in a voice that’s steady and calm you picked up that owl and now you have to take responsibility.

Katya Balen, October, October

Through Balen’s narrative style, with its lyric interludes, its cascading impressions and its free-falling dialogue — and without ever stating the facts or the label directly — this story for children becomes an educational tour de force.

Angela Harding’s illustrations deserve a special mention, because they are a joy. I love Balen’s own comment, in her acknowledgements, that Harding made a baby barn owl look good when they are in fact ‘disgusting’. Readers of Miriam Darlington’s wonderful Owl Sense will recall this to be true, from her description of returning a fallen barn owlet to safety.

Its feet wriggled at first, but soon its feather-weight settled to my grip. I expected it to smell like a kitten, but its alien stink of rotting mouse, vole blood and acrid ammonia hurt my nose. There was something part-reptile there. I looked into its wincing face, felt its scaly feet, and at their tips, whetstone-grey talons, already gripping fiercely. Millions of years of evolution, honed for predation.

[…]

With one hand grasping it I started to climb, my fingers stretching for holds in the stone. I dropped back down; I needed two hands. The owlet fitted inside my shirt along with a suspicious, parasitical tickling. Perhaps I needn’t have plopped it down next to my skin, but sometimes you have to keep going. With both hands free I could get up there more easily. At the ledge, I undid the tangled claws from me, pushing the fallen owlet back with the others, and let go.

Miriam Darlington, Owl Sense

The repellent nature of these youngsters is just one element of Balen’s story that serves to highlight October’s unexpected and exquisitely rare brand of fortitude.

October, October is a glorious, funny, tear-jerking, life-affirming novel. The conclusion is credible, lively and liberating, and not what October herself could have imagined. As she learns, ‘Not every story has just one perfect ending.'

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