The Children of Wolf Rock

For someone like me who began reading in the nineteen fifties, there is a retro feeling to Natasha Farrant’s latest novel. She returns to Stormy Loch Academy, which featured in her Children of Castle Rock eight years ago. This is a private boarding school in Scotland, run on alternative lines (think A. S. Neill’s Summerhill) by the kindly but stern Major Fortescue. Stranded here with the Major and his assistant Kelly are three children who, for a variety of reasons, can’t be with their parents. And here the story diverges from the Blytonesque template and introduces more up-to-date elements. Minna is unhappy and disruptive at her local primary and dreads the move to secondary, so Stormy Loch (there are no storms in the story) is her mother’s solution and Minna loves it so much she can’t bear to go on holiday with her parents. Kass (full name Ocean Kassana), can’t be with his parents because they are explorers making a TV documentary. And Tom’s parents have split up and have new partners and neither of them want him to live with them. Thrown together, the children’s developing friendship is complicated by Tom’s earlier association with a school bullying gang who had made Kass their particular target. And their friendship with Addie, a teenage guitarist playing runaway, hiding away in a nearby valley, who has her own family problems, adds further complications and sets off the main plot. This sees the trio yo-yoing between Scotland and London, aiming to prevent a possible murder. Given that much of this has only a toehold in reality – and the braining of the would-be murderer with a vase takes me right back to my childhood reading – Farrant holds it all together with skill, builds believable relationships between the children, and keeps the tension rising.