Book Review: "In the Making" by G.F Green

“In the Making” by G.F Green is one of those novels you just are not used to, and never will be used to, coming across. Why? Well, in detail, it describes the torment of a childhood that can only really be equated with the haunting of the two children in Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” and the murderous rampage of Susan Hill’s “The Woman in Black”. The book is fairly uncomfortable as it describes these [what are] basic human emotions in detail as the child [Randal] grows up in a school to become more and more aware of who his friends are and who are not his friends. Meeting a boy called Felton may prove vital to the story, but there is also a lot of stuff that happens before that which should ring alarm bells if anyone were actually watching this child properly. His strange obsession with certain people, his imagination which is sort of like a self-inflicted wound as it opens at inappropriate times, refusing to heal over and throw him back into reality. But as these lines draw parallel and become evermore blurred, I think it is safe to say what we are actually witnessing is a slow descent into madness. And he starts as a child so it makes it worse.

Let us now investigate some quotations that would make us aware of this from the very beginning and when I say the very beginning, I mean the second paragraph of the novel:

“The shadows fell huge on the walls. Crouching beneath his dressing down, he stared at them plunging along a stretch of light, where the young adventurers went by in the frieze, travelling in full company and very alive during this last hour before sleep. Randal knew where his heroes walking and leaning his tousled head against the fender, he wished them well and longed to be with them up there in that other land where he would be a hero too…”

Already, thoughts of martyrdom seem to pollute this young child’s mind and yet, there is a certain innocence about it even if, as adults, we are deeply concerned for this child’s safety and whether he is mentally at all stable. But this is only the first instance in which Randal encounters some sort of event to do with death and not all of it is imagined.

“He was staring at a gravestone. There was the word ‘Yeoman’ carved on it. Randal went closer, the long grass covering his shoes. ‘Edgar Lockhart’ he read, then ‘Yeoman’ then ‘Died 12th October 1619’ then ‘God rest his soul’. Randal saw his breath through the chillness. He stared at the one word ‘Yeoman’. He prayed for doubt, but none came to help him from his awful dread. He knew that the deadly word, “Yeoman” means a man who had hanged himself for a sin. He knew that both sin and ganging doomed him unutterably below that one cold word. He knew that the deepest hell had buried him, leaving only the word to mean his crimes and torture, that in all the years perhaps no more than one had gone to hang himself in the night, so black in shame, Edgar Lockhart, Yeoman.”

This definitely has some strange connotations to it seeing as at this point in the book, Randal has not yet reached the age of seven and yet knows about things like death, crime and suicide far greater than a child of his age or even slightly older should. This will prove something important when he goes to school and begins to feel the victim of other children before, ageing into his pre-teens, he begins to open up to Felton. He also displays this awareness when Miss Andrews breaks the bad news to him that he must go away for school. His world sort of falls apart, but the imagination there tends to linger and fizzle out, not just come to a direct stop. When Randal sees the grave of the Yeoman, it is only one of the first many times that Randal’s imaginary world collides with the real one and even prayer cannot save him from these utterly dark realisations of profound truth.