Bill Nagelkerke's Emily

 

Emily’s Penny Dreadful 
Bill Nagelkerke

 

Emily’s Penny Dreadful (2016)                
Bill Nagelkerke
Paperback, 146 pages

Penny Dreadfuls were cheap and disreputable fiction magazines, offering lively stories of highwaymen, murderers and other desperadoes, popular among boys and young men in the Victorian times. When the home of Emily’s Uncle Raymond burns to the ground, the only thing the grumpy writer manages to save is a single, 150-year-old Penny Dreadful.
Emily (9) is precocious; she knows this because Uncle Raymond has not only told her so but taught her how to spell it. Emily is also resentful, because she has only had her own bedroom for two weeks. Now she has to move in with her sister Sibbie, to make room for her homeless aunt and uncle. Tensions rise. Emily and Uncle Raymond are soon sparring over grammar, spelling and metaphors. 

“People who write books are always grumpy,” concludes Emily, “They can’t help it. They suffer from brain-strain, Dad says.”

Gradually Emily realises how serious a matter it is for a writer to lose his computer, back-up discs, notes and drafts. Uncle Raymond, of course, is full of self-pity, “I shall very likely never write another word,” he moans.

After Emily borrows the Penny Dreadful, she is inspired to try writing her own. Her first attempts – reproduced in full as a story within a story – are the highlight of this book. Emily calls it The Devil’s Element – a reference to the phosphorus once used for matches – and her first sentence reads, “It was a dark and story night.” Naturally Emily has her own Thurberish justification, “Reading a book in bed means it’s a story night. So there.”

Young readers will enjoy seeing how some of the characters in the tear-jerking saga resemble Emily’s family. The plucky heroine Miley is particularly thinly-disguised. Sibbie is furious when she recognises her own words. The astute reader will also spot that Emily has learned from Raymond’s grudgingly-given advice. In her story, the villainous kidnapper, known only as Pork Pie, pauses to write down new words in his vocabulary notebook. 

It’s all great fun, and Emily is about to rescue Miley from slave labour in a match factory, when writer’s block strikes. Both Emily and Raymond have run out of ideas. Now they are forced to swallow their differences and co-operate to get Miley to freedom and Emily’s book to a happy ending.
The result confirms Raymond’s admission that “All writers are liars and thieves,” (a line possibly purloined from Jack Lasenby) and brings events to a satisfactory conclusion.

Emily’s Penny Dreadful may indeed be dreadful but it is dreadful in a very enjoyable way. Bill Nagelkerke has created a light-hearted book which not only contains a guilty secret and an adventure but also provides a practical guide to young writers who want to tell a story of their own. This book is, in the very best sense, dreadful fun.

Trevor Agnew, 23 December 2015

Emily, the Dreadfuls, and the Dead Skin Gang
Bill Nagelkerke

 

Emily, the Dreadfuls, 
and the Dead Skin Gang                Bill Nagelkerke (2017)
Novel, Paperback, 168 pages

 

“I can read my stories to you,” said Emily…“They’re Penny Dreadful type stories, full of heroes and villains and exciting getaways and things like that.”

Emily is back!
This novel, Emily, the Dreadfuls, and the Dead Skin Gang, sees the return of would-be writers Emily (9) and her grumpy Uncle Raymond, a comical couple, who first appeared in Emily’s Penny Dreadful (2015). Having lost his computer in a fire, Uncle Raymond is still trying to re-start his writing career, while Emily has been inspired by one of his old Penny Dreadfuls (popular Victorian magazines, full of lurid crimes and dramatic escapades) to write her own story, Dead Skin.

Although Dead Skin is supposed to be a co-operative effort by Raymond and Emily, it is Emily who does most of the work. This adds to the fun because both writers are strong-minded and thin-skinned. Chapters of Dead Skin form a story within the story.
“Another audacious burglary!”

The Emily series is constantly amusing as the reader moves from one narrative to another, especially when Emily adapts events around her (and ‘borrows’ ideas from Uncle Raymond and her friends).
Events in the main story quickly turn up in a similar but funnier form in Emily’s hand-written manuscript. After Emily and her three best friends try to form a gang called the Dreadfuls, we see the Dead Skin gang vowing to capture the burglars who “use dust as a weapon as well as dangerous and threatening words.”
The various authors all play fair with their readers. The clues are all present, although craftily concealed, red herrings are seen, and shivers run down spines. Somebody even gets to say, “Beware, this is a trap.”

This story is a cheerful adventure, which gently spoofs both the Penny Dreadful style of adventure and the later efforts of Enid Blyton. It also provides positive encouragement and a good example for young people with writing potential.

Trevor Agnew
31 August 2017