A Dream of Hunger Moss

by Mabel Esther Allan

A girl visits Hunger Moss just before World War II and seems to relive the experiences of her mother who visited the same moor just before World War I.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1983

About the author

A prolific British children's author, who also wrote under the pen-names Jean Estoril, Priscilla Hagon, Anne Pilgrim, and Kathleen M. Pearcey, Mabel Esther Allan is particularly known for her school and ballet stories.

Born in 1915 at Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula, Allan knew from an early age that she wanted to be an author, and published her first short stories in the 1930s. Her writing career was interrupted by World War II, during which time she served in the Women's Land Army and taught school in Liverpool, but the 1948 publication of The Glen Castle Mystery saw it begin to take off in earnest. Influenced by Scottish educator A.S. Neill, Allan held progressive views about education, views that often found their way into her books, particularly her school stories. She was interested in folk dance and ballet - another common subject in her work - and was a frequent traveler. She died in 1998.

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For readers interested in child evacuees in WWII England, who found A Place to Hang the Moon a little too cute and unrealistic

This is one of my favourite Mabel Esther Allan books, and it isn't even set in Switzerland (I've read all of those!).

I enjoyed this book all the more because I had recently finished A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus, a modern book of an orphaned trio of war evacuees fleeing London and seeking secretly a permanent home amidst the chaos of the temporary billetting scene. You can read my thoughts on that book, which I enjoyed, but I can summarize it briefly thusly: written by an American for an American audience (by which I mean the USA, of course - Canadians have more cultural familiarity with Britain).

A Dream of Hunger Moss is far less likely to be turned into a Disney movie, thankfully. I was about to say it wasn't as polished, but that makes it sound ragged and ill-structured. And perhaps it could be seen that way, but to me, this was its charm. It reads like a slice-of-life tale, and within that very natural, realistic framework, the Oxfordshire countryside in the last days of the 1930s, during Chamberlain and not yet Churchill, are vividly and memorably described.

Alice and her rebellious brother Adam are sent from urban Liverpool (from Green Street, ironically named as there was not a hint of a living, green thing to be seen) to stay with almost estranged family friends while their mother recuperates from foot surgery and the father stays behind to run their small grocery shop. Alice and Adam have both heard all about Guelder Rose Farm and Hunger Moss from stories their mother once told them of her own childhood summers spent there. The reader is privy to a sense of loss and wistfulness, if only really fleshed out in Alice's imaginations. There was a boy, too, a Reuben, who was her mother Mary's dearest friend and who just suddenly dropped out of Mary's life one summer. Mary never returned to Guelder Rose Farm, having married and moved on. We're not sure how upsetting this was to her at the time, and she's pretty guarded about her feelings regarding the erstwhile Reuben, so much of the lost-love romance aspect (or at least, lost-friend tragedy - either way) is conjecture supplied by a curious Alice.

Alice, who has never seen the countryside, or apples growing on a tree, and has never considered where the eggs in her father's shop come from, suddenly finds herself shipped off to this mythic location to see it for her own eyes. We read about her shocks and mistakes and adaptation, while brother Adam chafes and struggles with the change. Both are drawn to (or obsessed with?) 'The Moss', a dangerous, boggy and desolate moor that the villagers and the fittingly named Farmer family they live with, eschew.

More of her mother's story is revealed to Alice as she seeks details to this past of her mother's she's almost obsessively constructed in her mind. And by coincidence (and because of the nature of small towns and farm dynasties) has now made friends with her own Reuben, in the same place. We compare and contrast the differences between then and now, and lasting family grievances, etc. It's not an overblown romance, thankfully, or some family melodrama - it's realistic and engaging and easy to enjoy.

Meanwhile, the spectre of WWII is looming, threatening on the horizon like a storm. Even this is not overstated and cliched - we follow the realistic highs and lows of the tensions, the different views of the people from the cities versus the countryside (little details like Mr. Farmer never listening to the wireless, reading only the agricultural magazine, and Mrs. Farmer never worrying since the Germans have certainly 'never heard of South Guelder', and getting on with her enormous list of daily farm chores). The differing perspectives on the relative threat of all-out-war with Germany and 'media bubbles' of diverse groups such as Alice's Liverpudlian working-class parents and of upper-class Londoners of the nearby Manor are also referenced or at least obliquely glimpsed, giving a realistic and less fantastical feeling of the time. We see the government representatives suddenly invading and taking a census of available housing for the coming influx of child war guests - they are intrusive by nature and quietly contrast to the pastoral setting, both at the humble, lower-class Guelder Rose Farm, and at the grand manor house in North Guelder, staffed with servants and hired labourers.

War evacuees arrive late in the story, and we get a unique insight of the situation from recently converted city kids Alice and Adam, who are also loath to welcome other children into their accepted rural existence, but who can bridge the gap and understand what it is to be from a slum of an industrial city and to be thrown unwillingly or otherwise into farming life. We briefly see the shunning of the newcomers by other young village denizens, and the efforts made to integrate and comfort the displaced and local kids alike.

I don't much care for the title - Hunger Moss is meant to be an uninhabited, boggy moor surrounded by the villages of Guelder (South Guelder and North Guelder feature most prominently). Once you've read the story, the title fits just fine, but I certainly dragged my feet in reading this - wasn't the most attractive cover or title.

I definitely, definitely wanted to hear more about the old Roman road and archaeology and ghostly inhabitants, but that wasn't the scope of this book, either.

I can recommend this to any fan of vintage British children's lit who is also interested in this time frame. The story is not strictly about war guests, per se, but I appreciate that this is a tangential, nearly a coming-of-age tale as opposed to a purpose-built, happy-ending, twee and almost trite book like A Place to Hang the Moon (I sound like I'm really ragging on that one, which surprises me, since I really enjoyed it at the time! A bit saccharine upon reflection, and I think I prefer this lower-key, less emotionally charged story. Or more emotionally ambiguous, anyway - not leading, and not accompanied by a sweeping, crescendo-filled, tear-jerking soundtrack in my head. I feel it, as true to form for Mabel Esther Allan, was able to situate me there in my mind's eye, and see it clearly through untinted lenses).

Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but one I can recommend to like-minded folk who appreciate a lightweight juvenile vintage story from time to time.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s the summer of 1939, and Alice and her brother Adam live with their parents in Liverpool, where their father keeps a greengrocers. Alice and Adam have never been to the countryside, but they have always loved their mother’s stories of the summers she spent at a farm in Oxfordshire during WW1, and especially the mysterious Hunger Moss, with its Roman tower. She used to meet a boy called Reuben there, but he vanished in the summer of 1919 and she never knew what became of him. Alice and Adam are astonished to be told that they are to go to stay on the same farm their mother always stayed on, Alice is thrilled, but Adam less so (he is afraid of cows). They are bewildered by country life at first but they like the kindly Farmers with whom they are staying. Alice, like her mother, is fascinated by Hunger Moss and the Roman Tower. And then they meet another Reuben.
This is a very good story with an interesting plot and excellent atmosphere. As always, Mabel Esther Allan is brilliant at evoking places. Hunger Moss is loosely based on a place called Otmoor, and the details on farming come from her experiences as a Land Girl in Ww2. Very enjoyable.

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

C. fiction, YA, England, pre-WWII, evacuation, Mom's stash, discard

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grades 5+. History repeats itself in this story about Alice and her mother.