Family Fictions (review)

Given the significance of home in children's literature as noted by Perry Nodelman (192-93), and the diverse configurations of the contemporary nuclear family, this is an ambitious book that charts the development of the fictional representation of the family and the portrayal of the child within that unit.

The most ambitious section of the book is Nikki Gamble's introduction to the genre. Extensive and meticulously researched, the introduction occupies almost half the book and provides a chronological overview of the changing constructions of "the child," through to the emergence and development of the family in its various literary manifestations. The introduction also examines the family in terms of the historical, social, political, and economic discourses surrounding it. Integrated with the overview of child, family, and context are commentaries on texts by twenty-four children's authors, beginning with the moral stories of Mrs. Sarah Trimmer and concluding with a short exploration of Nina Bawden's futuristic novel Off the Road (1998)—a text preoccupied with the dissolution of traditional family life. This notion brings me to the title of the book and its possible dual meaning which hints that the organizational shifts that have taken place within the post-war family—the increase in divorce, single parenthood, remarriage—may have rendered the nuclear family as no more than a fiction itself.

The remainder of the book is organized into three chapters that focus, in turn, on late twentieth century texts by Anne Fine, Jacqueline Wilson, and Morris Gleitzman. It is always pleasing to find critics willing to take a serious interest in contemporary popular fiction for children. However, there are several troubling issues in the first two chapters.

At the beginning of Tucker's chapter on Fine, he reminds the reader of his background in educational psychology (49)—a needless reminder given what follows. There is a lengthy preamble that examines the author in very general terms only. Tucker concentrates on the current condition (or what he perceives to be the ills) of society and relates this to the changing dynamics of family life. This is an unnecessary discussion since this has already been comprehensively covered in the fifth section of Gamble's introduction in which she draws attention to the political trend "for a return to 'traditional values' and the attribution of society's problems to the breakdown of the nuclear family" (44). It is not until seven pages later that Tucker begins to discuss Fine's work specifically, looking at eleven texts in Fine's oeuvre, including The Granny Project, The Tulip Touch, and Madame Doubtfire. However, one is again reminded of Tucker's background as he writes of Fine's "unsettling message" which should be "listened to carefully" by "the adult world" (50). This said, he does briefly touch on the comic element in Fine's work (surely part of Fine's appeal to the child reader), most notably when discussing The Book of the Banshee (61). Once again, though, he reverts to "the message behind the humour.... [c]hildren are always hard work, but in adolescence they can also be expected to be intolerable" (62).

Tucker approaches Jacqueline Wilson's novels in a similar manner, looking at eleven books, from her first real success, The Story of Tracy Beaker, up to her darker, more serious work, The Illustrated Mum. However, some of the more keen insights are again marred by the tendency to treat the characters as though they are real people whose psychological histories are being discussed at a case conference. Moreover, at times, the temptation to speculate on issues outside the text, is apparently irresistible. For instance, when discussing The Dare Game, Tucker notes that adults, like Tracy's mother, "are offered little sympathy, even though they too may have once had the sort of childhood that makes it hard for them to form relationships later in life" (757).

On a more positive note, however, Tucker does appear to be aware that adopting an approach that is heavily weighted in favor of child psychology might render Fine's and Wilson...