Wishful Thinking

It is truly refreshing to find a children’s novel, set in contemporary England, which features the lesser-known gods of Roman and Celtic Britain as central characters. There are human protagonists too, of course: Kevin, the adolescent whose wishful thinking in the vicinity of the River Ouse awakens Abandinus, its dangerously obliging deity; his nan, who is helping him endure the breakdown of his parents’ marriage; Greg, a professor of mythology, with strange and secret sorrows in his past, who helps to elucidate the nature of the pantheon that emerges around Kevin’s struggles with his family, friends and enemies. The irruption of capricious pagan forces into the lives of young people enmeshed in sundry forms of mundane 21st-century strife and desire is made oddly feasible by Sparkes’ exuberant storytelling. As Kevin and his fellow disciples try to recruit the Old Gods into fulfilling their materialistic and romantic fantasies, the tragic, farcical and mythical possibilities are exploited to the full, all of them combining in a climactic car-chase in which the chthonic and the comic collide. This is a splendidly eventful read, with welcome collateral possibilities for learning some obscure and enchanting history.