Alcock, Vivien

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Vivien Alcock

Personal

Born September 23, 1924, in Worthing, England; died, October 12, 2003, in London, England; daughter of John Forster (a research engineer and scientist) and Molly (Pulman) Alcock; married Leon Garfield (a writer), October 23, 1947 (died, 1996); children: Jane Angela. Education: Attended Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Arts, Oxford, 1940-42, and Camden Art Centre. Politics: Liberal. Religion: Church of England. Hobbies and other interests: Painting, patchwork, reading.

Career

Writer of books for juveniles and young adults. Gestetner Ltd. (duplicating firm), London, England, artist, 1947-53; manager of employment bureau, 1953-56; Whiltington Hospital, London, secretary, 1956-64. Military service: British Army, ambulance driver, 1942-46.

Member

Authors Society.

Awards, Honors

Travelers by Night was named to the Horn Book Honor List and named notable book of the year by the American Library Association, both 1985; The Cuckoo Sister was named notable book of the year by the American Library Association, 1986; The Monster Garden was named Voice of Youth Advocate best science fiction/fantasy book and named notable book of the year by the American Library Association, both 1988.

Writings

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1980.

The Stonewalkers, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1981.

The Sylvia Game: A Novel of the Supernatural, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1982.

Travellers by Night, Methuen (London, England), 1983, published as Travelers by Night, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1985.

Ghostly Companions: A Feast of Chilling Tales (collection of ten ghost stories), illustrated by Jane Lydbury, Methuen (London, England), 1984.

The Cuckoo Sister, Methuen (London, England), 1985.

Wait and See, Deutsch (London, England), 1985.

The Mysterious Mr. Ross, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1987.

The Monster Garden, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1988, reissued as The Return of Frankie Stein, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

The Thing in the Woods, illustrated by Sally Holmes, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1989.

The Trial of Anna Cotman, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1990.

The Dancing Bush, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1991.

A Kind of Thief, Dell (New York, NY), 1992.

Singer to the Sea God, Delacorte (London, England), 1992.

Othergran, Methuen (London, England), 1993.

The Wrecker, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1994.

The Face at the Window, Methuen (London, England), 1994, published as Stranger at the Window, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1999.

(Editor) Best Stories for Seven-Year-Olds, Hodder (London, England), 1995.

Time Wreck, Mammoth (London, England), 1996.

The Silver Egg, Walker (London, England), 1997.

The Red-Eared Ghosts, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.

The Boy Who Swallowed a Ghost, illustrated by Jason Ford, Mammoth (London, England), 2001.

Contributor to Help Wanted: Short Stories about Young People Working, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1997, and Working Days: Short Stories about Teenagers at Work, Persea (Boston, MA), 1997.

Adaptations

The Sylvia Game was adapted for television and broadcast on BBC-TV, 1983; The Haunting of Cassie Palmer was the basis of a television series produced by TVS (Television South), 1984; Travellers by Night was adapted for television and broadcast on BBCTV, 1984, and was the basis of a television series produced by TVS, 1985; The Monster Garden was adapted as Frankie's Monster, 1992.

Sidelights

British author Vivien Alcock got a late start as a writer of books for children. Her first novel, The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, was published in 1980, when the author was fifty-six. Once started, however, Alcock "wrote fluently and confidently," according to Julia Eccleshare in the Guardian of London, producing over twenty books in the next twenty years. Nicholas Tucker, writing in London's Independent, characterized these novels as having "distinct originality and quality." In addition to The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, Alcock also wrote such popular titles as The Stonewalkers, The Mysterious Mr. Ross, The Cuckoo Sister, The Trial of Anna Cotman, The Monster Garden, Travelers by Night, A Kind of Thief, Singer to the Sea God, The Red-Eared Ghosts, and her final book, The Boy Who Swallowed a Ghost. By the time of her death in 2003, Alcock had become a "widely admired" writer, as Eccleshare went on to note, "with a gift for blending fantasy and reality—and a particular understanding of the inner feeling of teenagers, especially those who observe quietly from the sidelines." The author of action-packed books of mystery and fantasy that are very popular with teenage readers, Alcock had a "gift for well-paced, single-strand narratives and engaging characters," commented a writer for the Times of London in an obituary of the author. Reviewers have further praised Alcock for creating gripping and suspenseful tales involving intriguing characters that sensitively reflect many of the emotions and experiences of her young readers. Alcock was also recognized as an author whose sense of humor is as evident in her books as her ability to captivate and entertain. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Elaine Moss described Alcock as a "writer who can command plot, character, nuance, and dialogue with a precision and sensitivity that sets her firmly among the elite of English fantasy authors for the young."

A Long Road to Publication

Though not published until well into her fifties, Alcock started writing at a very early age. She found expressing her thoughts and feelings on paper was an effective way to deal with such tumultuous events as her parents' divorce, her mother's death when Alcock was ten years old, and the adjustment of moving from her home to live with a guardian in another city. She was thrilled to discover something that she loved and that was unique to her. The youngest of three sisters, Alcock managed to fill her time during her mother's terminal illness with drawing and writing stories. It also became her responsibility to tell the final goodnight story at bedtime. Still, as a youth, Alcock was more enamored with art than writing.

"Our guardian encouraged us to draw and to write, which my mother being ill never had a chance to do," Alcock once commented. "I wrote a lot of verse as a child and I also made up all kinds of stories. It is easy to be the hero of a story if you write it yourself. I started telling myself stories in which the heroines were always small and skinny and dark, like me. It was comforting to find out how well they got on, facing up to incredible adventures and danger—as long as I was writing the script. It was a form of escapism, I suppose, just as daydreams are. But I think it was a valuable one."

Alcock attended the Oxford School of Art, but left in 1942 to do her part in the war effort, serving as an ambulance driver in Belgium. It was there that she met her future husband, Leon Garfield, who was working as a medical orderly. Despite strong opposition from both families, the couple wed in 1948. Garfield was trained as a bio-technician, but by the 1960s he had managed to establish himself as a major writer for children, with titles such as Jack Holborn and Devil-in-the-Fog. Meanwhile, Alcock had begun work as a commercial artist, leaving behind any childhood ambition to write.

Motherhood, however, rekindled Alcock's desire to write. Her young daughter Jane's love of original stories encouraged her so that Alcock finally turned her hobby into a profession. Inspired by her daughter's interest in these made up tales, she starting writing again, launching what would become a rewarding career. Alcock once commented, "Careers often seem to happen almost by accident. When I left school, I wanted to be either a writer or an artist. Chance (in the form of an entrance exam needing more Latin than I possessed), sent me to art school rather than to the university. Chance (in the form of a small daughter who wanted to be told stories, rather than have them read to her), turned me back to the idea of writing. I like writing for children because I love telling stories of adventure and fantasy. I don't set out to instruct or preach, but it is impossible to write without one's own views showing. I can only hope my heart and my morals are in the right place." Also, by the time Alcock began penning her own children's stories, her husband's career was beginning to wind down in the same genre. Eccleshare postulated that perhaps for Alcock the feeling was that you "could only have one such creative force in a house at a time." By 1980, it was Alcock's turn.

Alcock's first book, The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, is a tale about the seventh child of a seventh child who has spiritual powers. Cassie Palmer has unhappily inherited her magical abilities from her mother and she longs to be a normal and average teenager—just like her friends. However, one day, on a dare, Cassie conjures up a ghost who refuses to leave her alone. A reviewer in Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books described The Haunting of Cassie Palmer as "an impressive first novel from a British writer, with a fusion of realism and fantasy that is remarkably smooth." Dudley Carlson remarked in Horn Book that in The Haunting of Cassie Palmer Alcock "achieves a good balance between family tensions and financial worries, on the one hand, and supernatural uncertainties, on the other; the result is a satisfying brew." This first book set the design for many more to come, establishing themes which Alcock would go on to explore in her entire body of work: "complexities of family ties, the need for friendships and the value of kindness," as Eccleshare described such concerns.

Most of Alcock's novels contain elements of fantasy and the supernatural. In The Stonewalkers, lonely and friendless Poppy Brown pours her feelings out to a statue that suddenly comes to life. Unfortunately, the statue is mean and destructive and Poppy struggles to stop the statue's trail of terror. Alcock explained her thoughts on writing about fantasy and the supernatural to Amanda Smith in an interview in Publishers Weekly: "Oddly enough, I've never had a supernatural experience, and I don't even think I quite believe in them, but I find a ghost or supernatural element is a marvelous catalyst. It can be a sort of an echo of a character, like a shadow thrown out before them, showing back part of their own image. Most ghosts are very pitiful objects, so a child can learn compassion. But it's also fun in a book. It gives a little chill—binds a book together." A critic for St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers noted of The Stonewalkers that an "exciting chase scene and a long captivity in a cave with the dangerous statues mark high points in this book, a favorite with young readers." In a School Library Journal review of The Stonewalkers, Anita C. Wilson wrote: "The author skillfully creates a sense of escalating horror. The blending of suspenseful fantasy and elements of the contemporary problem novel works remarkably well here, and may appeal to children not ordinarily attracted to fantasy literature."

Blending the Supernatural with Family Values

For her third book, The Silvia Game: A Novel of the Supernatural, Alcock "turned toward a more direct focus on family and values," according to the writer for St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers. Once again, as in her two previous novels, the author presents a young protagonist alienated from her parents. Here Alcock features an irresponsible parent, a painter, whose daughter thinks that he might be involved in a forgery. This young girl, Emily, in turn resembles a Renoir portrait, and such a resemblance involves her in friendships with an heir and with an illegitimate son.

Critics have consistently praised Alcock's books. Whether it was the suspenseful mystery involving the supernatural and art forgery in The Sylvia Game, the attempt of two circus children to save an old elephant from the slaughterhouse in Travellers by Night, the exciting collection of stories found in Ghostly Companions: A Feast of Chilling Tales, the fascinating tale of separated sisters in The Cuckoo Sister, the untold story dramatically revealed in The Mysterious Mr. Ross, the experiments in genetic engineering in The Monster Garden, or the evil and secrecy in The Trial of Anna Cotman, Alcock's books have been recognized for their intriguing stories and endearing characters. For example, Travellers by Night was dubbed a "charming quest story" by the writer for St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, while the Carnegie Medal nominee, The Monster Garden, was a "surefire hit," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Nor did Alcock always deal in the supernatural; The Cuckoo Sister "avoids fantasy altogether," according to Tucker, and was "one of [Alcock's] best novels." Also, The Trial of Anna Cotman is a realistic and rather disturbing story, as Tucker described it, about a teen who gets in over her head with a secret club that has stringent rules against breaking its code of secrecy.

Summing up the author's many strengths, Geoffrey Trease commented in the Times Literary Review that "Alcock is unsentimental, but there is an unmistakable depth of feeling in her deft handling of her very human and imperfect characters. She is writing of fear and courage, exploring the ambivalent relationships of parent and child, boy and girl, boy and boy. The contemporary juvenile dialogue rings true, and there is felicity in the descriptive phrasing." Mary M. Burns similarly wrote in Horn Book: "Vivien Alcock has the uncanny ability to create stories of suspense with overtones of fantasy which are firmly grounded in reality. Her timing is impeccable; her characters are unforgettable; her imagery is as subtle as it is precise." George English remarked in Books for Your Children: "Vivien Alcock has always been a dramatic writer, with a strong sense of story. Her books begin with a bang almost on page one and they hurtle at breakneck pace to a thundering climax. Where other authors linger over physical descriptions of character and setting, Alcock is more concerned with keeping the action moving. Yet at the same time she's very aware of the inner, emotional life that her characters are leading."

With the 1991 title, A Kind of Thief, Alcock returned to her earlier theme of the difficulties of an adolescent caused in part by a parent who is outside of society's norms, yet Alcock does so while eschewing supernatural interventions. Here the father in question is not merely on the fringes of society, but is actually in jail. Elinor's father goes to prison for some illegal business deal, and no sooner is he carted off than his second wife—Elinor's step-mother—leaves for Italy, taking her young son with her. Elinor and her other siblings are sent to stay with various relatives and she goes to live with her father's cousin, Aggie. But once there, it seems that she may be more closely involved with this family than she thought. Soon it looks as though the contents of her father's suitcase which Elinor has gotten back from Victoria Station might contain money stolen from Aggie's mother; such a suspicion leads her to question her own nature and that of each of her relatives. In the end, however, Elinor is able to accept herself and her family for what they are in this novel "infused with a bittersweet seriousness," as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly described the novel. The same writer further noted that the book was a "pulse-quickening read," and that Alcock "writes some of the smartest, most engrossing YA fiction around."

Returning to the supernatural in Singer to the Sea God, Alcock lends a new twist to the Perseus myth. Elizabeth S. Watson, a reviewer in Horn Book, called the story "fresh" in its approach. Watson also stated, "The setting and text remain true to the epic style" and the book is "a fine, fast-paced story." A reviewer in Publishers Weekly described the story of orphan Phaidon and his two companions as "a strong coming-of-age story, in which the uncanny is never far off."

The uncanny is the theme in Alcock's Stranger at the Window, a story in which eleven-year-old Lesley sees a ghost in her neighbor's attic. The supernatural specter in this case, however, turns out to be a young illegal immigrant boy, Erri, who is being sheltered and hidden in London. Lesley teams up with the children next door in trying to help him, resulting in a series of adventures and close calls. Mary M. Burns, a reviewer in Horn Book, commented that Alcock "knows how to build tension from chapter to chapter, leading from one peril to the next in the best cliffhanger tradition." A reviewer in Publishers Weekly noted that Alcock's "sharp-eyed observations, wry humor and contemporary theme make this slightly implausible tale both believable and compelling." And Ilene Cooper, writing in Booklist, called the novel "fresh middle-grade fare."

In her 1997 The Red-Eared Ghosts, Alcock features a young adolescent with special gifts. Mary Frewin has special vision: since a toddler she has seen and been visited by a series of red-eared ghosts. Mary soon comes to learn, via a rather tortured path involving an old book and an art teacher, that she may have gotten such powers from her great great grandmother, Mary Crumb. This other Mary disappeared without a trace over a hundred years earlier, and trying to track her, Mary Frewin slips in time and arrives in a parallel universe, finally to learn the significance of her red-eared ghosts. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly had reservations about the novel's "convoluted" plot, yet concluded that "Mary's death-defying reentry home is spectacular enough to beguile most fantasy buffs."

Alcock once commented: "Although I have a liking for dramatic and sometimes fantastic plots, I try to make my characters as real as possible, and their relationships true. I suppose, like all writers, I am influenced to some extent by my own experience, though I do not draw on it consciously. My heroines are no longer always small and skinny and dark. I suspect there is a little of me still lurking at the bottom of all the characters I create, blown up out of all recognition. I find I tend to write about children who are facing some great change or difficulty in their lives, and who learn to grow through it to a greater understanding of themselves and other people. I do not apologize for having happy endings. I firmly believe that children are resilient and resourceful, and will make their own happiness somehow if given a chance. The end of childhood is not necessarily when the law decides it shall be."

With her husband's death in 1996, Alcock continued to write, producing almost a book a year. A trip to India resulted in an illness that kept Alcock in a wheelchair for the final years of her life, but she managed to publish her last book, The Boy Who Swallowed a Ghost, dedicated to her grandchild, Jessica, in 2001. Writing of that book, Tucker noted that it "shows the same combination of gentle humour, vivid imagination and lively sense of mystery that made Vivien Alcock such a valued as well as popular writer for the last twenty years of her life."

If you enjoy the works of Vivien Alcock

you might want to check out the following books:

Kate Decamillo, The Tale of Despereaux, 2003.

Edward Eager, Knight's Castle, 1956.

Cornelia Funke, Princess Knight, 2004.

E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, 1902.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Children's Literature Review, Volume 26, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

Gallo, Donald R., editor, Speaking for Ourselves, Too, National Council of Teachers of English (Urbana, IL), 1993.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1997, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Help Wanted: Short Stories about Young People Working, p. 461; May 15, 1998, Ilene Cooper, review of Stranger at the Window, p. 1625.

Books for Your Children, spring, 1991, George English, "George English Looks at the Work of Vivien Alcock," p. 22.

Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, May, 1982, p. 161.

Horn Book, June, 1982, Dudley Carlson, review of The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, p. 294; November-December, 1988, Mary M. Burns, review of The Monster Garden, p. 781; July-August, 1993, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of Singer to the Sea God, pp. 463-464; November-December, 1997, review of Working Days: Short Stories about Teenagers at Work, p. 682; May-June, 1998, Mary M. Burns, review of Stranger at the Window, p. 339.

New York Times Book Review, September 11, 1983.

Publishers Weekly, September 30, 1988, Amanda Smith, "Of Ghosts and History," pp. 28-30; December 20, 1991, review of A Kind of Thief, p. 83; December 14, 1992, review of Singer to the Sea God, pp. 57-58; March 3, 1997, review of The Red-Eared Ghosts, p. 76; March 16, 1998, review of Stranger at the Window, p. 64; May 29, 2000, review of The Monster Garden, p. 84.

School Library Journal, May, 1983, Anita C. Wilson, review of The Stonewalkers p. 68.

Times Literary Supplement, November 20, 1981, Elaine Moss, "Ghostly Forms," p. 1354; July 23, 1982; Geoffrey Trease, "Curdling the Blood," p. 788.