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Heathrow Nights
After his father's death and his mother's swift remarriage, Russell feels he can identify with Shakespeare's Homlet. But when his class is taken to see the play, he and his mates ruin the performance. Banned from the half-term school trip, the boys head off to find a place to stay on their own. At first, Heathrow Airport feels comfortable and safe. But Russell, left alone there, finds it altering. Restless yet sleepless, Heathrow nights fill with waking dreams. A thought-provoking novel for older children.
Audio Cassette
First published December 7, 2000
13 people want to read
About the author
Jan Mark
149 books21 followersJanet Marjorie Mark (1943-2006) was a British children's author and two time winner of the Carnegie Medal. She also taught art and English in Gravesend, Kent, was part of the faculty of Education at Oxford Polytechnic in the early 1980s and was a tutor and mentor to other writers before her death from meningitis-related septicaemia.
Meet the author:
What is your favourite animal?
The noble rat
What is your favourite boy’s name?
George
What is your favourite girl’s name?
Marjorie
What is your favourite food?
Pickled herring
What is your favourite music?
Klezmer
What is your favourite hobby?
Listening to music
Meet the author:
What is your favourite animal?
The noble rat
What is your favourite boy’s name?
George
What is your favourite girl’s name?
Marjorie
What is your favourite food?
Pickled herring
What is your favourite music?
Klezmer
What is your favourite hobby?
Listening to music
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 4, 2020
Three teenage tearaways from Hertfordshire -- Adam, Curtis and the narrator Russell -- disgrace themselves on an outing to see a performance of Hamlet and as a result are banned from a school trip to Cumbria. Rather than confess to their parents -- and having intercepted letters from school -- they arrange to spend the week in London. Alas, things don't go according to plan and they find themselves in limbo wandering around the terminals of Heathrow Airport.
While they do so Russell is able to meditate more fully on his situation: his father having suddenly died, his mother hasn't taken long to get remarried -- to the person who was with his father when the latter unexpectedly passed away on a plane.
His resentment at a changing situation over which he has no control causes him to see parallels between himself and Shakespeare's Hamlet: the prince learns from his father's ghost that he was murdered by his uncle Claudius and that his mother Gertrude rushed to wed his uncle.
But is the comparison exact? Are there also parallels between other characters and the people he knows? And what will happen when his week in limbo comes to an end?
The late Jan Mark put together a believable scenario here, one in which teenage angst is combined with devil-may-care attitudes, unrealistic expectations and a swilling together, like oil and water, of worldliness and woeful ignorance. Curtis is a pothead, Adam argumentative, and Russell filled with dark thoughts. As a team their success in avoiding consequences dimishes by the day, if not by the hour.
With the concourses, travellators and cafés of Heathrow's terminals the author creates a modern Elsinore, one in which suspicion, anxiety and rash decisions may well lead to tragedy. When Russell goes to Blewburton Hill, where his father's ashes were scattered, he finds no ghostly revelations, meaning he has to find his own answers. Yet this is no modern retelling of Hamlet -- for a start there is no high body count, just the death of the trio's hopes of getting away with their subterfuge.
The story's the thing in which we'll engage with Russell's conscience, of course, but the author subtly (and without being didactic) includes a commentary on the play, particularly on character motivations, as the lad tries to work out his feelings and how much they arise out of his perceptions and maybe misconceptions.
Along the way we contemplate the loneliness, isolation, even desolation of homelessness; when Russell sees this on the streets of London he knows he himself is in danger of becoming a statistic. He also knows Heathrow won't do -- too expensive, for a start -- though, as the author said in an interview, there's "something intriguingly improbable about it, a landlocked island, an area the size of a small town, where no one lives."
But, to quote one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, no man is an island: we read on in hopes that Russell will reconnect with other humans and understand that, in order to realise dreams, he has to have them in the first place.
'Contemporary' novels for young adults can fall prey when the language and aspirations no longer reflect the obsessions of later generations. Apart from one or two words -- does anyone talk of 'mobes' these days when referring to smartphones? -- not much has fallen out of date in the two decades since this was published, meaning that this is a novel that should continue to speak to its intended readership for quite some time yet.
While they do so Russell is able to meditate more fully on his situation: his father having suddenly died, his mother hasn't taken long to get remarried -- to the person who was with his father when the latter unexpectedly passed away on a plane.
His resentment at a changing situation over which he has no control causes him to see parallels between himself and Shakespeare's Hamlet: the prince learns from his father's ghost that he was murdered by his uncle Claudius and that his mother Gertrude rushed to wed his uncle.
But is the comparison exact? Are there also parallels between other characters and the people he knows? And what will happen when his week in limbo comes to an end?
The late Jan Mark put together a believable scenario here, one in which teenage angst is combined with devil-may-care attitudes, unrealistic expectations and a swilling together, like oil and water, of worldliness and woeful ignorance. Curtis is a pothead, Adam argumentative, and Russell filled with dark thoughts. As a team their success in avoiding consequences dimishes by the day, if not by the hour.
With the concourses, travellators and cafés of Heathrow's terminals the author creates a modern Elsinore, one in which suspicion, anxiety and rash decisions may well lead to tragedy. When Russell goes to Blewburton Hill, where his father's ashes were scattered, he finds no ghostly revelations, meaning he has to find his own answers. Yet this is no modern retelling of Hamlet -- for a start there is no high body count, just the death of the trio's hopes of getting away with their subterfuge.
The story's the thing in which we'll engage with Russell's conscience, of course, but the author subtly (and without being didactic) includes a commentary on the play, particularly on character motivations, as the lad tries to work out his feelings and how much they arise out of his perceptions and maybe misconceptions.
Along the way we contemplate the loneliness, isolation, even desolation of homelessness; when Russell sees this on the streets of London he knows he himself is in danger of becoming a statistic. He also knows Heathrow won't do -- too expensive, for a start -- though, as the author said in an interview, there's "something intriguingly improbable about it, a landlocked island, an area the size of a small town, where no one lives."
But, to quote one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, no man is an island: we read on in hopes that Russell will reconnect with other humans and understand that, in order to realise dreams, he has to have them in the first place.
'Contemporary' novels for young adults can fall prey when the language and aspirations no longer reflect the obsessions of later generations. Apart from one or two words -- does anyone talk of 'mobes' these days when referring to smartphones? -- not much has fallen out of date in the two decades since this was published, meaning that this is a novel that should continue to speak to its intended readership for quite some time yet.
August 11, 2011
So pompous. So educational. So meaningful. So bad. If this was the state of teen fiction, I can see why Harry Potter was such a breath of fresh air.
August 16, 2019
I didn't like this book and didn't see the point of it.
May 27, 2013
Russel con i suoi amici Adam e Curtis è stato punito per aver rovinato la recita dell'Amleto. Salteranno la gita dimetà semestre. Ma non vogliono che i genitori lo vengano a sapere, perciò distruggono le comunicazioni della scuola e decidono di partire ugualmente. Si recano a Londra, per stare dalla sorella di Adam, che però li butta fuori. E così finiscono per passare il tempo all'aeroporto di Heathrow. Lì Russell dorme pochissimo e si identifica con Amleto, visto che il padre è morto e la madre si è risposata poco dopo...
Tre stelline perché non ha una fine vera e propria, vorrei tanto sapere se Russel è riuscito ad andare d'accordo con Chris e a chiarirsi con la madre, che è veramente odiosa, perché è troppo concentrata su di sé per aiutare il figlio a superare il suo dolore.
* Il proverbio dice che è l'ultima goccia che fa traboccare il vaso, ma in realtà è la prima, quella che conta davvero.
Tre stelline perché non ha una fine vera e propria, vorrei tanto sapere se Russel è riuscito ad andare d'accordo con Chris e a chiarirsi con la madre, che è veramente odiosa, perché è troppo concentrata su di sé per aiutare il figlio a superare il suo dolore.
* Il proverbio dice che è l'ultima goccia che fa traboccare il vaso, ma in realtà è la prima, quella che conta davvero.
January 3, 2022
An amusing premise where 3 boys skive a school trip and end up sleeping over at Heathrow, where one reflects on recent life events. Enjoyed this short story.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews