Sam

by Philip Temple

Sam is about the loneliness of a small boy evacuated to Yorkshire during the Blitz, missing his mother. It is about post-war London, where his mum lets him ride the tube and buy tickets to dreamland at the local cinema; and then the solitude of boarding school and the despair which pulls him back to his mother's side. It is the moving chronicle of a child's desire and the strategies he develops to deal with the absence, and the complicated presence, of the people he loves.

448 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1985

About the author

Philip Temple is a multi prize-winning New Zealand author of fiction, non-fiction and children's books. His latest book is the adventure novel 'The Mantis' which explores why people risk all to be the first to reach the summit of an unclimbed mountain. Another new novel is due mid-year. He is also currently researching for a major biography of NZ author Maurice Shadbolt.

Philip was born in Yorkshire and educated in London but emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18, becoming an explorer, mountaineer and outdoor educator. With Heinrich Harrer, of 'Seven Years in Tibet' fame, he made the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramide in West Papua, one of the seven summits of the seven continents, and later sailed to sub-Antarctic Heard Island with the legendary H.W. ‘Bill’ Tilman to make the first ascent of Big Ben.

Philip's first books reflected this adventurous career and 'The World At Their Feet' won a Wattie Award in 1970. After a period as features editor for the New Zealand Listener, he became a full time professional author in 1972. Since that time he has published about 40 books of all kinds and countless articles and reviews.

In the fiction field, his nine novels include the best-selling 'Beak of the Moon', an anthropomorphic exploration of the mountain world seen through the eyes of the mountain parrot, kea. This, and its successor 'Dark of the Moon', are rated as unique in New Zealand literature. In more recent times, his Berlin-based novels 'To Each His Own' and' I Am Always With You' controversially tackle issues around German guilt and historical experience.

Philip’s non-fiction range is wide, from books about exploration and the outdoors to New Zealand history and electoral reform (MMP). His book about the Wakefield family and the early British settlement of New Zealand, 'A Sort of Conscience', was NZ Biography of the Year in 2003, and won the Ernest Scott History Prize from the University of Melbourne. Philip’s award-winning children’s books, in collaboration with wildlife artist Chris Gaskin, are unique to the genre.

Over the years, Philip has been awarded several fellowships, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1979), the Robert Burns Fellowship (1980), the 1996 NZ National Library Fellowship, a Berliner Künstlerprogramm stipendium in 1987 and the 2003 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency. In 2005, he was invested as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for Services to Literature and given a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Following examination of his work, Philip was granted the higher degree of Doctor of Literature (LittD) by the University of Otago in 2007.

Philip Temple lives in Dunedin with his wife, poet and novelist, Diane Brown.

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel, considered autobiographic, about a boy growing up in Britain during the blitz.
It isn't really a genre that I seek out, but Philip Temple is an author of whose books I own around a dozen, and have read about half. His more common genre is non-fiction and often about mountaineering and exploration. He was born in Britain but emigrated to New Zealand where he still lives.

This novel is pure nostalgia - not for me, as I have no connection with London, or Yorkshire during the blitz, but for the author, and those of his era. It is so well described, although described very simply through the eyes of a boy, it is not hard to be drawn into this in a nostalgic way.

The loneliness of living in Yorkshire with his grandparents, his mother living and working in London, but unable to have Sam with her; having only one friend up there; receiving letters from his mother. Over what is a short period it becomes apparent his aging grandparents are not up to looking after Sam for very long. Temple plays out the story of Sam's father, not giving away the details quickly, and cleverly only alluding to the situation. It isn't hard to draw the conclusion that Sam's mother may contribute to her relationship issues with men, as this story plays out.

This novel doesn't paint a happy picture of the Britain of this era, but it reads very realistically, very true. A country in financial trouble, dealing with the war drain. The people are tired, sick of rationing and being unable to afford to buy things they usually have. Work is hard to come by, and so is housing. Employers and landlords have the upper hand.

The next step for Sam is joining his mother in London, where she has rented a bachelors room, or a bedsit, where she and Sam are living in each others pockets. But things go awry and they must move out - and his mother gets a job in a hotel. Unfortunately for Sam this is a live-in position, and children are not welcome, so he starts at a boarding school for boys. He is not happy here, and begins a cycle of running away, testing the headmaster, who tries all manner of treatments to stop Sam - from punishment, to empathising, to bargaining; all to no avail.

There is more, but my intent is not give away all the storyline. I was surprised how successful this novel and the writing style were for me. The relationships Sam has with his mother, grandparents, friends and those at the school are all awkward. He struggles with his internal thoughts, he is stubborn, and jumps to conclusions - all very realistic, and well articulated in the painting of damaged characters.

An interesting read. 4 stars.