A Christmas Card by Paul Theroux was published in 1978. This is one of the books that I was reading to try to get me into the mood for Christmas, but so far non of them have been exactly what I expected, anyway, this was still a good read, certainly a very quick read at just 73 pages and is probabbly aimed at older children really. It’s very slightly spooky. It has some black and white illustrations by John Lawrence.
The tale is told by the elder of two young brothers, Marcel who is nine years old. Louis is his younger brother (yes, that Louis). Their father had decided to take them to their home in Indian Falls to spend Christmas there, they’ve never been there before and driving through a blizzard is not the most sensible thing to do, inevitably they end up lost. As it’s a very rural area and the few houses and businesses around are closed up for the season they’re in trouble, but eventually they see what seems to be a hotel or road house and stop to ask for help.
An ederly man invites them in, his name is Pappy apparently, and they end up staying overnight, but in the morning Pappy is nowhere to be seen, but he has left a Christmas card behind and they realise that the card is as good as a map, according to the boys’ father the building on it is an image of their holiday home, and they can just follow the road to it – which they do.
It’s Christmas Eve and the older boy, Marcel, notices that as night falls outside the Christmas card becomes dark too, and he has also noticed that there’s a tiny spot of light on the card which moves, he guesses that it’s Pappy moving around and he’s coming in their direction. Earlier when they had gone to cut down their Christmas tree Marcel had thought he had seen the strange man and he is nervous.
This is quite an atmospheric read, but all’s well that ends well.
I was just surprised that the author, Paul Theroux had written a book using his sons as the charaecters, like A.A. Milne did disastrously to Christopher Robin, but it doesn’t seem to have done Marcel and Louis any lasting harm, that we know of anyway.
