The Driftway

by Penelope Lively

Travelling an ancient country road while running away to his grandmother, a young boy glimpses events in the road's past that help him cope with his problems of the present.

Genres: Childrens, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, Ghosts

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Although this book had some enjoyable parts and I liked the general idea, there were places that dragged and parts of the storyline didn't seem plausible. A boy who resents his stepmother, runs away with his little sister. He meets an old man on a cart, travelling the driftway, a route like a bridleway that was used in old times. Here the boy experiences time slip scenes. This is explained to him as traumatic events leaving a mark in time. It was a nice enough idea but we didn't find the time slip very interesting, this all took place in one evening and at the end of it, they reach his grans house and somehow the boy realises his stepmother is nice and wants to make an effort Seemed too much of a simple resolution in a short space of time. This seemed to be a book that adults would get what the author was trying to convey more than the target audience. The loss of his mother wasn't touched upon, I expect many children who don't have perfect lives themselves would be left wondering what the boy had to complain about.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A driftway is a road that has been in use for a long time, often for thousands of years, but in modern times has been replaced by a larger and more direct road. Dritftways were often used for driving cattle from place to place, hence the word "drift", but can go back even to neolithic times. In Lively's book, a driftway is also a place where memories can carry across time. Paul, travelling the driftway, encounters memories from 18th century rogues, from soldiers in the War of the Roses, from a Saxon fleeing the Normans, and so on. This theme fits beautifully with Lively's other work, which often touches on the elision of past and present and how the past is constantly with us. She often explores this theme with great potency and tenderness, and while I enjoyed some aspects of this novel, I did not think it was the best example of her work. The memories or stories that Paul encounters don't feel fully realised, and don't engage the reader enough to make the characters come to life. As well as that, Paul isn't an interesting or persuasive character: he is running away from home because he doesn't like his new stepmother, but over the course of a day he begins to come to terms with the role of his stepmother in his life. Lively always depicts Paul as being in the wrong, and his emotional journey doesn't feel authentic. I really liked the idea of the driftway, and some of Lively's descriptions are totally captivating, but overall this is not one of her stronger novels.

[Mike Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unhappy with his widowed father's new wife and accused of shoplifting, Paul and his younger sister Sandra run away, hitching a lift with a gnarled old Carter on an ancient track, The Driftway. There are voices along the Driftway, for those that would listen and the tales they tell - a Saxon boy terrorised by Vikings, a nineteenth century family almost caught with the spoils of poaching, and the story of a highwayman told from three different viewpoints - help Paul begin to see his own life in some kind of perspective. The benevolent but restrained influence of Old Bill and some of the other grown ups they meet along the way guide the children without coercing or nagging to the right outcomes.

It couldn't happen today of course - children absconding would instantly send social services and the police into paroxysms of overreaction. Even if the children hadn't already been frightened witless of stranger danger, it's unlikely an elderly man travelling alone in a horse drawn cart would ever pick them up for fear of what he might be accused of. And the idea that a police officer would allow them to complete their journey and discover for themselves that home is what you make of it would be disbelieved by today's kids, who are more than familiar with bureaucracy and procedure.

So Penelope Lively's novella is as much a period piece as the "ghosts" of the Driftway she brings to life, and a reminder that good writing for children can be sustained, ambiguous and non-didactic. By providing very little she brings the people and situations to life quickly and effectively in the mind's eye. There is no guarantee of a happy ending and the reader is left to wonder whether Paul did manage to fulfil his resolution to get on better with stepmother Christine but one feels that after experiencing the Driftway life can never be the same. And that's not a bad achievement for a children's story.

[Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not as accomplished as The House In Norham Gardens I still loved this book. When Paul's father takes in a partner, he cannot cope and runs away taking his little sister with him. Why does his father need anyone? How could anyone replace his dead mother and what is there to like about Christine?
When Paul runs away he encounters a stranger taking his horse-drawn cart along the ancient Driftways around and beyond Oxfordshire. Whilst heading to his grandmother's, Paul begins to see nd hear echoes of others who have traveled this route and their stories help him better understand his own.
I agreed so much with Lively's commentary on our connection to the land. A key book for my own research.

[Capn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tracked down an old copy and paid more than I usually do for used books, because I was convinced that this book had the potential to be my favourite Penelope Lively book yet. I mean, it's going to be hard to beat The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy, which I liked much better than even Astercote, but this one seemed to have everything I like: ancient trackways through the UK countryside and mid-century Brit kids interacting with unexplained phenomena with historical or mythological origins. Sort of "folk horror light" or an "earth mystery"-based story. I seriously couldn't wait to read it, and broke my "no books bought in 2022" rule to get it... and a few others which don't come up often or were very competitively priced, while I was at it (you see how I have a backlog of physical 'to reads'!). Incorrigible.

Sullen adolescent Paul, and his seven-year old sister Sandra, are having quite the day. Accused of shoplifting, they go on the lam, and decide to quit their home with their widowed father and his new wife, Christine, for good. It doesn't sound at all as if Christine is the evil stepmother you might mistake her for, given Paul's unfettered hatred of her. But regardless, Paul isn't playing ball. And when one thing leads to another, he decides that they'll go to stay with their Gran, in Cold Higham, also in the Midlands of England, some ten miles away.

Seething with teenage angst and blowing everything well out of proportion, they find themselves walking an ancient green lane or ghost road, the Driftway, once used as a highway for Drovers bringing in herds of cattle and livestock from Wales. Soon, they stumble upon Old Bill, a weathered old man driving a one-horse tinker's cart with two donkeys in tow, who offers them a lift to Cold Higham.

'This is an old road, son. Older than you or me, or the houses in this village, or the fields round about, or anything we can see now, or even think about...This is a road that was made when there was first men in these parts, trodden out by feet that had to get from one place to another, and it's been trodden ever since, year by year, winter and summer. Stands to reason it's got a few tales to tell. There's been men passing by here, and women, and children, over thousands of years, travellers. And every now and then there's someone does an extra hard bit of living, as you might call it. That'll leave a shadow on the road, won't it?'

This could not sound more perfect to me, twenty-odd pages in. I found the sullen teenager relatable and pitiable, I liked the sound of the sub-plot with the maybe-not-so-evil-stepmother, and I definitely liked Old Bill and his open-minded nature, trundling along the Driftway, happy to take along two wayward children for company and to keep a watchful eye on them. And of course, these shadows...

Sadly, for me, it was the shadows of the past, the "messages that cut through time like it wasn't there", that didn't hold me. Lively is a very adept author, and she manages the clunkiness of changing POV's and time periods with the required dexterity. But this switching only really works, I feel, if you are fully engrossed in each of those points of view / side stories. And, amazingly, I just wasn't.

The dust jacket synopsis says:

As they jog slowly along the Driftway Paul's consciousness is filled with alien presences - among them a boy who has lost his home and family to the marauding Norsemen, a young Cavalier in retreat from the Battle of Edgehill, and an eighteenth-century highwayman.

And there are more: the viking raids with death and fire; a sentry from a stone age tribe and settlement deciding whether or not to kill a would-be intruder in his sleep; a poor family who must risk their lives for rabbits poached from the gamekeeper's patch to survive; the aforementioned highwayman story (there's a twist there, in this story - the longest of the bunch. It becomes a Rashomon situation, with the same unpleasant story being told from another perspective later on, and it makes it even less agreeable, I thought); and then the English Civil War story, which is also rather a substantial tale, and deals with the grim realities of war both off and on the battlefield. There's a few short glimpses, too, one of which is about a widow of Nowhere and her young child, starving, and being shunted from one system to another.

But I, and my child, being of Nowhere, have already been sent out form this Parish last month, and with great haste, lest my new child should be born and there be three of us chargeable upon the Parish, for the Justices have said that my husband's settlement was not a legal settlement, and he, too, was of Nowhere.
I must, they say, go to the place of the settlement of my father.
I do not know my father's name.
Thomas Mason, Overseer, is saying that he will not take me in, and that if I stay in this Parish I must be whipped as a Vagrant.
It is not permitted to be a Vagrant.
I am a Vagrant, for I am of Nowhere

Vivid images are called to my mind of that drowned Syrian 3-year old, washing up on Europe's wealthy shores, and the hundreds of migrant children, some just babies of 6 months, who are still being held in hellish detention centres on the U.S. border, forever rent asunder from their mothers who are missing, presumed dead.... when Lively wrote this in 1972, did she expect such injustices to play out in the Western world of 2022?

So when I say I found the entire book to be a bit of a slog, you'll see what I mean - it's the emotional content of the stories, and also the violence and pointlessness of war, that really wore on me. It might have helped young Paul to gain some perspective, but where the jacket blurb says, "messages from people who passed by long ago and had some powerful experience of joy or sorrow", I would argue that there is precious little 'joy' in any of those messages. History is grim.

There were a few passages I especially liked, and they are both commentary in the present tense by Old Bill, the cartman. I'll share them here, because I think they are messages from The Driftway, like those Paul gets from the Driftway, of import to us, all of us, in 2022. Emphasis (bold) is mine. Here is the first:

'He just wanted to get away. Not think about it.'
'Ah. Stands to reason. But he'd have to in the end.'
'Have to what?'
'Think about it. Deal with it in his head. When a thing's happened to you it's no good shoving it away and pretending it hasn't. You can go off your head that way.'
'Battles?'
'Not just battles,' said Bill with a snort. 'Most of us don't get mixed up with battles, do we? Anything. Everything.'
Everything?
'It's what you do about things that makes you the kind of bloke you are,' said Bill.

'You were right : it was different for each person in it, even if what happened was much the same each time. Nobody was quite what the other people thought.'
'Stands to reason,' said Bill. 'Nobody is. That's what makes things interesting. Other people, that is.'
'I'm not sure. You get all muddled. Finding out. You don't know where you are.'
'Ah. But it's if you don't find out you've got something to worry about, son, you take my word for it. Soon as you're ready to believe another bloke might not be exactly what you think he is, you're halfway to being able to live with him. Or work with him, or whatever it is.'
'Or her,' said Paul

You think everything's happening just to you, he thought, but it isn't. It's happening to other people too. It sounds obvious when you say it, but it isn't till you think about it. Me and Christine : it's been happening to her too. Only I haven't ever listened to her.
I've been like someone with a bad cold, all kind of shut up inside myself, not being able to hear other people. Just shouting out at them sometimes.

I feel that every single U.S. citizen (and perhaps, everyone else, too) needs desperately to meditate on these excerpts, in this time of fervent politics - no one's really considering the other individual. They're so convinced they know that 'person' already (and their own superiority - I could have included an excerpt about that, too, from Paul's unorthodox education on the Driftway) without even bothering to listen to them, really seek to understand. This is how wars start...

The Driftway is a cleverly written "boy's" book, I'm sure written to appeal to (and reason with) moody teenage boys of the 1970s, trying to help them to grow up with a proper perspective of life.

It horrifies me to realise that whatever is missing in the world-view of a typical 13 year old male looks exactly the same as what appears to be missing in many (I desperately hope not 'most') adults in the English-speaking and wider Western world at present. A lot of anger, a lot of remarkably immature minds, not developed enough to really understand 'empathy'. Not a stable state.

[Rob Hopwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Driftway by Penelope Lively

Young Paul is burning with resentment over his father's remarriage to a woman named Christine. He feels betrayed, distrusting every adult and immersing himself in his own misery and anger. When he is accused of shoplifting, he impetuously flees with his little sister, hoping by some method or other to reach the rural village where his grandmother lives. The children hitch a lift from an old man who travels the ancient roadways in a cart pulled by a donkey. Old Bill tells Paul that the road can impart messages to those who are receptive and willing to learn from them. Paul thereafter receives several visions during which he participates as an observer in various incidents which happened at certain locations along the road in the past. One occurrence is told from three different angles, helping Paul develop empathy for other people's viewpoints and feelings. His sharing the experiences of people who lived under conditions unimaginable to a modern child also enable Paul to identify what his own problems are and how to overcome them.

Of course, while the basic outline of the story was feasible when this book was published in the early 1970s, it could hardly happen today, for children suddenly disappearing would result in frantic parents, police and social services fearing the worst and taking immediate action to find them. And it is unlikely that a good-natured elderly man travelling alone would dare give two children a lift along the way for fear of what he might be accused of later. For this reason, the 1970s environment The Driftway describes is as much a piece of history as the other more distant happenings that the road reveals to Paul.

The book is relatively short at around 150 pages, but the author has a talent for conveying the power of events and feelings using a minimum of words. And in common with her other novel, Astercote, Penelope Lively describes physical locations as possessing characteristics and powers resulting from the events which occurred in them in the past. It is probably right to say that the author’s love for her homeland and the stories it holds is at the heart of The Driftway. The strong sense of a past peopled with individuals who were perhaps not so different from us makes a trip down the Driftway a worthwhile endeavor.


Below are some noteworthy quotes from the book:

…if the place is a special place - and at the right time other people can pick up that shadow. Like a message, see? Messages about being happy, or frightened or downright miserable. Messages that cut through time like it wasn’t there, because they’re about things that are the same for everybody, and always have been, and always will be. That’s what the Driftway is: a place where people have left messages for one another.’


‘Places go on. They last a sight longer than people do. And the names of places. They’re old, always. From old times. From the people that made them first, cleared the land and that.’

It’s the same stream, Paul thought, the same stream the boy talked about. He heard it like I can hear it now, and saw that long flat hill just the same as I see it.

‘You know something else, son? The first time you get yourself worked up about other people - strangers, people you’ve never known, never will know - that’s when you’re beginning to grow up. You’re learning. Mind, some people never do, and they’re the ones you want to look out for. There’s a lot of harm can come from them.’

There you are, you see. Things don’t happen in circles. It’s more like dropping a stone into a pond: you make ripples and they bump into each other and make more ripples.

You see the way the shape of a country’s made the people in it, and you see the way they’ve written themselves all over it, too, people who’re dead and gone now. In the way the fields go, and the roads, and the things they’ve built, and the bits they’ve dug up or cut down or flooded or drained or not been able to find a use for at all.’

Most people look at a bit of country and they just see it as an arrangement of hedges, and trees, and lanes, and they don’t think of how it’s all come about, like. They think it’s natural. There’s hardly such a thing as a natural landscape. It’s something that’s always on the move, changing every few years. And if you get to know a bit about it you can see all the layers of changes, going right back into old times: where there’s been a village that’s gone now, or a road that’s got forgotten, like this one…

The fog rolled back before the cart, revealing a tree, a twist in the track, a clump of cow-parsley heads splayed against the hedge: he imagined other eyes in other times looking at the same things, feeling the same feelings, thinking ... No, not thinking the same things. That would be the difference.
‘You can’t know how they thought,’ he said. ‘Not really.’
‘I s’pose not, son. But we should try. We should do that.’

Soon as you’re ready to believe another bloke might not be exactly what you think he is, you’re halfway to being able to live with him. Or work with him, or whatever it is.’

You think everything’s happening just to you, he thought, but it isn’t. It’s happening to other people too. It sounds obvious when you say it, but it isn’t till you think about it.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Driftway is one of Penelope Lively's children's books and is the story of a boy, Paul, and his younger sister, who run away from home escaping from the their new stepmother. Paul decides the safest place to go is to their grandmother's house and they start on that journey and hitch a lift with Old Bill who travels the country with his horse and cart. The mode of transport ensures that the journey is at a sedate pace but also Old Bill frequents the old roads, off the beaten track along ancient travelling routes known as Driftways. The Driftway is a road not just through the countryside but also through time and Bill explains to Paul that sometimes where emotionally powerful situations have occurred these have left their shadow on the road and some people are able to see those shadows and hear the stories they tell. As they continue to travel Paul begins to see the people who have lived and died along the road over centuries of time and each of their stories imparts universal life truths to him. Sadly some of the lessons as ones we can only really learn with the accumulated wisdom of age:
When talking of how things occur Bill says to Paul "Things don't happen in circles. It's more like dropping a stone into a pond; you make ripples and they bump into each other and make more ripples...And there's always more than one way of looking at things."
And as Bill tries to help Paul deal with a situation that has occurred but which he has no control over Bill explains how someone in that position has to "Deal with it in his head. When a things happened to you it's no good shoving it away and pretending it hasn't. You can go off your nut that way." In reply Paul considers and thinks "I kind of built it all up in my mind...I do that sometimes. Make things seem quite different from the way they really are." Later one of the shadows explains to Paul "this has been...a perfect example of the nature of truth itself, for one person's account of what has happened would be very different from that of another, while each might be true according to the facts as perceived by himself."

This is a gently written book for children however it might only be as an adult reader a real understanding of those life lessons and the universal search for the "truth" mentioned can be fully appreciated making this a charming read for adults too.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great prose but the plot wasn't interesting and I can't imagine the time slips being that interesting for kids. I read this as an adult though (children's books are good for periods of brain fog or reading slumps).

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pleasant children's book from the 70's with a fascinating fantasy slant:

Paul's father has re-married and Paul is furious, defensive and hostile. He makes every attempt to exclude his fathers new wife, to the point of buying cutlery so that he and his younger sister Sandra can eat their tea in their own room.

At the store the two children are accused of shoplifting and Paul runs out to hitch hike to their grandmother who lives in a nearby town. The cart that picks them up is an oldstyle cart, pulled by a horse and its owner, old Bill takes them to their grandmother at a slow steady pace. As it is a horse and cart, whenever possible he takes them on alternative routes, along 'The Driftway' of the title. An old, old road the driftway holds images and memories of people who have lived on it before and Paul sees some as he rides along. A young boy, desperately trying to save his village from Norse raiders, a highway man, a young woman in an oldstyle dress...

As Paul starts to see the stories of the different visions from history he starts to see his own life in new a new light, the glimpses from the past are what makes this book fascinating, but Paul's slow maturing views make for a pleasant feeling of completion as the end of the book is reached.

This is very much a children's book; Paul's wildly unrealistic attitude to his fathers new wife is very childlike and unlikely to resonate with older readers. It is also a clear reminder how fast the world is changing, written in the seventies, the society portrayed is already as remote to the modern world as society a hundred years ago. These are interesting times to live in. The idea behind the story, that roads can be doorways to the past as well as just trails to travel on, is an old one and a theme I love. In some ways this story reminded me of Roger Zelazny's 'Roadmarks', another road that takes you to unexpected places.

[Will Sargent · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favourite book that cements PL at the very top after reading kempe and norham. As an aside, this also shows GGKay's disorganised Ysabel how to do it with style.

My wife shares PL's fascination with the past, especially through inanimate objects and buildings. We also enjoy walking old roads, like the Driftway, while role-playing drovers, tinkers and storytellers of ages gone by.

Although her subjects and chrs would be considered very gentle by today's brash thumping background music standards, the observations and subtle character development is so incredibly tight. Driftway sparkles with carefully considered detail at every turn.

[Pl Parmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story for children. Touch of British history with moral for young readers.