The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange - Mark Barrowcliffe

Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal. 

He blew it. 

- From the cover blurb of The Elfish Gene.

In his sometimes comic, sometimes painful and often lovably geeky memoir, Mark Barrowcliffe writes of a youth misspent around the Dungeons and Dragons table. Misspent, you wonder? OK, it's a hobby, and not one generally considered cool, but it's just a bit of fun. People do it. So what if it's not "cool?" Still, Barrowcliffe chronicles the way that this game took over his life, stirred up his imagination and led to him living more in the world of make-believe than reality.

I felt rather sorry for the teenaged Mark, awkward and obsessive, someone who, like all teenagers, was keen to find his niche in the world, who, if he must be a misfit, would be a misfit with all his might and main, but who wasted so much time and energy trying to impress people who clearly despised him. It made me feel rather sad to read of how much he idolised Porter, the dungeonmaster of his D&D group, who never pretended to have any time or respect for Mark. Come on, kid, I wanted to yell through the pages and across the years, you can do better than that! Worst of all was when he would side with Porter in a sad attempt to win a smidgen of approval - or, at least, not have Porter kill off Mark's D&D character! - against his true friend, Billy.

The Elfish Gene was full of outrageous stories of boyish experiments gone horribly wrong and Mark's attempt to try to weasel his way out of ridiculous situations. I could sympathise with his all-encompassing obsessions. Friends and family would confirm that I usually have something that's always in my mind, and at one time it was The Lord of the Rings - which, of course, had a huge influence on the world of Dungeons and Dragons (and subsequently on Mark Barrowcliffe, with several chapter titles being lifted from the novel.)  Barrowcliffe claims to have read Lord of the Rings seventeen times, and yet he claims that there are no females in the whole novel except ethereal elf-maidens and cuddly hobbit-wives.

Excuse me?!


Ethereal elf-maidens, cuddly hobbit-wives and Eowyn, the asskicking shieldmaiden of Rohan, if you please!

(Calm down, Edwards!)

Similarly, although I have never D&Ded (though I came close a couple of times,) I took exception to Barrowcliffe's claim that girls just didn't - although I can appreciate the lack of appeal to females in the groups he described in his memoir. Because, quite frankly, Barrowcliffe presents his teenage self as rather a brat: irritating, obnoxious, pretentious and too much intent on idolising other obnoxious brats, although amusing to read about, from a safe distance. It was actually quite embarrassing to read in times, and although Mark's love for the game was clear, I felt that there was a sneering undertone in the narration. I felt that this was a bit dorky to be associated with and am a little embarrassed even writing a review of a book about Dungeons and Dragons - and I am geeky and proud! I think the adult Barrowcliffe's ridicule rubbed off on me from the pages, and it's upsetting that someone should feel this way about something that they used to devote so much love to.

Barrowcliffe is honest and unflinching in sharing a slightly embarrassing past which nonetheless made him who he is today - and yet, I suspect he doth protest too much when he tries to persuade the reader that he's left this life behind him.

Middlemarch, George Eliot

I'm not fussy when it comes to books and I read a variety of genres for different reasons: romance when I'm feeling squishy and in need of cheering up, fantasy for escape, crime and adventure stories for the excitement, kids' and teen fiction for nostalgia's sake, to recapture the innocence (or not) of days gone by. But most importantly of all, I read about people. Sometimes that's all I want in a story. The other day I found it very difficult to find a film in the DVD shop that was just about people - not romance, not the sort of adventures that don't tend to happen in real life, just a story about ordinary people doing ordinary things.

Middlemarch is very much a character-based story, focusing on various residents of a small English town at a time of social and political change. Although the country may be a very different place in twenty first century, where people travel further afield as a matter of course, and technology is the world's defining feature, Middlemarch's characters could quite well be living among us. Eliot deftly brings her characters to life and allows us to see everyone's motivations and thought processes, so that even as we recognise their foolish or self-deluding motivations, we have, if not always sympathy, an in-depth understanding of even the most unpleasant characters seen from both outside and within.

First, there's Dorothea Brooke, a very modern woman for the nineteenth century: good-hearted and intelligent, if rather naive, with a scientific mind. She chooses to marry an older man, Mr Casaubon, in the hopes of assisting his great works as an equal. Mr Casaubon, in theory, is keen on the idea of a beautiful young wife who understands his life's work, but both he and Dorothea are doomed to disappointment and frustration. When it comes down to it, Mr Casaubon finds that his wife's beauty draws unwanted attention from younger men, provoking his jealousy. Her understanding of his work is a nuisance to him, because she might have her own ideas about it, which don't suit him.

Then we have Fred Vincy, university-leaver who is full of good intentions, but ultimately doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. In Vincy I was reminded of Richard in Dickens' Bleak House, trying out one profession after another, but I was also reminded of many of my contemporaries - as well as myself - trying to find our place in the world. And we meet Dr Lydgate, who is new to Middlemarch and whose unfamiliarity, high ideals and new methods are met with distrust from his patients. Lydgate's marriage to the spoilt Rosamund is strained by their spending what they cannot afford, and even more by the persistant lack of communication between husband and wife, who each go their merry way without thought for the other. All too familiar are the consequences of such a relationship.

A contemptible character is a money-lender named Bulstrode, a self-righteous, self-justifying hypocrite whose attempts to keep an unsavoury past buried become increasing desperate throughout the novel. Not that we have any modern examples of such corruption in people who hold positions of power over others(!)

I decided to read Middlemarch after watching the first part of a BBC adaptation several years ago, as I generally prefer to read books before watching film or TV adaptations. Although it took me about three years to get around to starting, and many months to finish Middlemarch, reading just a few chapters between lighter works, this isn't through lack of enjoyment so much as a wish to savour the novel, and it has always been easy to pick up where I've left off the last time. Now I've finished, I'm going to feel quite at a loss without it on my desk, where it has lived since the summer.

The Other Alice, Julia Clarke

Ally is like a bad fairy who arrived at the party and cast an evil spell over the world. Everything in my life is fracturing and changing and going wrong, wrong, wrong.

Alice is fed up. It is the night of her elder twin brother and sister's birthday party, and she doesn't want to be there. Sister Nell is shouting, Mum is tired from a stressful week at work and Alice's two best friends have stood her up in favour of a double date. When a strange girl gatecrashes the party, all it takes is one small lie about knowing her. Like a vampire, that small invitation is enough for the other Alice, Ally, to creep into the family's affections. Only Alice (our Alice) feels uncomfortable and doesn't trust the newcomer.

The Other Alice is a simply-written story exploring the issues of family, identity and young romance, with a claustrophobic layer of mystery. Although I borrowed this book from the teenage section of the library, it seems to be aimed at the lower end of the age group, maybe for ten to thirteen-year-olds*, due to its straightforward narrative style which has Alice immediately state the thoughts that other novels might take chapters of hinting and suspicion. This is not a criticism, as I wasn't in the mood for a twisty narrative taking a long time to arrive at an inevitable conclusion. The uncomplicated narrative style, middle-of-nowhere Yorkshire setting and realistic characters made The Other Alice a cosy read that took me back to the books I used to check out of the library ten years ago.

I found it interesting that Julia Clarke decided to give two main characters the same name. There was no confusion as one Alice narrated the story and the other used the short form Ally, but it was interesting to think of the two girls as two sides of the same coin. Alice is a good girl, sensitive and rather idealistic with a vivid imagination, while Ally is unpredictable, wild and rather dangerous. Alice senses that Ally wants something from her family, and while Ally makes herself at home and invites herself into family occasions, Alice feels slowly squeezed out.

It was interesting to read The Other Alice immediately after writing my review of Fallen, as there is a similar love scenario to the former. Alice has a crush on her sister's boyfriend Spence, and her feelings for him, while rather vague and unlikely, cause her to turn down the more obvious candidate in her friend Sam who loves her. (Yes, another love interest called Sam! Good name. My first crush was on a Sam. But that is beside the point.) It was refreshing after all the star-crossed-lover, eternal romances that are out there, to read one that is based on liking, hormones and being flattered by someone paying attention. It may be small-scale, but I could relate so much better than in most teenage romances. My only slight criticism was that, lovely though Sam was - and he was! - he seemed a bit too good to be true among a cast of complex characters.

A quick, satisfying read and an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

*I realised after writing this review that The Other Alice contained a bit of language which would take it to a 12A/PG-13 rating if it were a film.