The First Book of Calamity Leek is sad, sweet and funny at the same time.
The story is of Calamity Leek and her sisters Maria Liphook, Sandra Saffron Walden, Dorothy Macclesfield, Annie St Albans, Truly Polperro, Nancy Nunhead, Mary Bootle, Eliza Aberdeen, Evita Thrupp, Millie Gatwick, Odette Pontefract, Pontefract, Fantine Welshpool, Cinderella Galashiels, Adelaide Worthing, Toddler Thurrock, Toddler Pease Pottage, Toddler Gordano, Toddler Gretna Green, Toddler Watford Gap, Toddler South Mimm’s, Baby Sainsbury’s, who all live at St Emily’s Orphanage.
Except the Orphanage is a front. Really the girls are kept inside their “grey stone, red and yellow brick-topped Wall, jewel-toothed and twinkling, belting them into perfect safety,” where they are trained to kill off males, or demonmales as they know them, when they become of age, and where the truth is instilled into them from the Appendix, “for all the answers we need in life”, and of which Calamity Leek has the best knowledge.
An example entry from the Appendix – “Injuns: red-skinned, feather-skirted, whooping demonmale warriors, set to prowl Outside the Wall and tear wandering females into pieces with machetes or arrows.”
You see Mother “was sent down to raise an army, only how was she ever going to raise an army on Earth, when her only beloved daughter got killed off by a demonmale? Well, the best answer she came up with was to rescue other daughters already part-grown Outside and to grow them as her own.”
So that is the sad bit of the story what with the girls being kidnapped and brainwashed, but the little world the sisters inhabit is idyllic in some ways – “I was going to wake up safe in the dorm with the communicator bing-bonging and Aunty singing, ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ with Evita’s porridge pot set on the table, and our milk bowls around it’ – as they spend life in their walled in country garden in North Wales.
And it is sweet how all the girls have a great togetherness - “such solidarity in the sisterhood.” But it all comes to an end and Calamity’s world as she knew it is blown apart, which she finds difficult to accept. And with this being “The First Book of Calamity Leek” it throws it open to a sequel.
I enjoyed this book for the world it created and the lead character's voice.
Publication date: 7th Feb 2013
Amazon UK link: The First Book of Calamity Leek
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