The Crowlings - Hardcover

Lawrence, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0001857266 ISBN 13: 9780001857261

Publisher: HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, 1999

Synopsis

A novel in three parts – the story of a culture clash between American immigrants to an un-named planet and the culture of the few remaining inhabitants – The Crowlings.

When an unlikely marriage takes place between an immigrant and a native, all manner of differences and difficulties are encountered which ripple down through three generations and culminate in the granddaughter of the marriage, one Linni Crowling, leading the massed clans back to safety.

About this title

Review:

Gamma Centuri Five is an earth colony world, a planet of ruined cities and indigenous tribal people. A native youth becomes a man and takes the name Ben Crowling, only to return home and find his clan massacred. Ben helps to lead the remaining children to safety, but two generations later his grandson, Mikklau, rejects the ways of the clan and seeks his fortune with the Earthers. It is Mikklau's granddaughter who must lead the people full circle as the earth civilisation collapses.

Louise Lawrence is the author of many previous young adult novels, including the Carnegie Medal shortlisted The Power of Stars. With the three part structure of The Crowlings she pays skilful homage to Walter M. Miller's SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, while the theme of crow-like creatures rising against humanity offers tribute to Frank Baker's seminal 1936 novel The Birds, and to a lesser extent the more famous Daphne Du Maurier tale found in The Birds and Other Stories.

It is not really convincing as SF because the colonial society on an alien world is so very much like contemporary America, yet this similarity does makes the book work as a powerful moral fable concerned for the plight of the dispossessed and downtrodden. Fortunately, Lawrence's characters are drawn strongly enough to compensate for what may be a deliberate lack of expected technology, and she brings this thoughtful novel to an exciting and tension filled resolution. --Gary S. Dalkin

From the Back Cover:

He saw smoke from the camp, and flames where no flames should be. A tiny sound came from the fallen twigs at his feet. Small and black, a single crowling fed on the rotting matter beneath the trees, reminding him of who he really was: no warrior, no hunter, no defender of his people: a scratcher in the dirt for other people's leavings: a Crowling.

So Small Fry, now re-named Crowling, returns to his camp to find it destroyed by the Luppa clan. Tents are burnt to the ground, his whole clan killed except the children – and one girl, Cloud. Together, their animosity always present, Crowling and Cloud must lead the children to safety and far-away lands, and begin a new life for the new clan – The Crowlings.

Lousie Lawrence is the author of the acclaimed Children of the Dust, of which the Observer said, "Don't miss it." Her other novels include 'Andra, Moonwind 'and'Warriors of Taan.'

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0001857266
• ISBN 13: 9780001857261
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240