A boy is seriously ill in hospital, and fearful of the operation that may or may not save his life. A nurse tells him he must find in his dreams his animal ‘finder’, which will protect him and bring him back from wherever his illness and the doctors take him. In dream and in delirium, and wherever the mind goes when under anaesthetic, Jim and his lion help each other overcome a series of symbolic entities and dangers, mapping out for us a kind of understory to the clinically observable disease and treatment. Some of Jim’s experiences reminded me of when I was once delirious with fever and ‘saw’ the disease I was subject to as a vast crystalline being looming in the corner of the room. Hoban’s poetic story of illness overcome has been wonderfully captured and extended by Deacon’s powerful and imaginative illustrations, which construct, out of ludicrous and frightening fragments, a picture of a young mind grappling at the deepest level with agents that seek its extinction. Hoban and Deacon first collaborated on the memorable Soonchild, the last book Hoban wrote before his death in 2011.
(July 2014)
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