When Max is twelve his adored father dies and his mother, who is not coping, sends him away to stay with his granny.  Max has never met his granny before, and knows little about her or where she lives.  All he remembers is his father telling him that when the time is right Max will meet her.

As the train pulls in to Savernake the guard remarks that in twenty years he’s never stopped at this station, and this is the first time he’s ever even noticed it.  It comes as no surprise then that the train Max is on has taken him ‘not just into the country, but into another world’ too.

On arrival at Savernake Max has a moment of anxiety when he realises that although his mother has told him ‘they’ will collect him, he hasn’t asked who the ‘they’ will be.  He spots a ‘white haired old tramp’ asleep in a ‘rusty old car sinking into the grass’ and on waking him up discovers the man is his grandfather and the car has been there since his father left nineteen years ago.  His grandfather tells him ‘seeing as how you were coming, it hardly seemed worth going home.’  So begins his stay at Savernake, where nothing is as it seems, and the rules of the world he has left behind don’t matter. 

When he meets his grandmother for the first time he is puzzled when she says to him, “It’s so nice to see you again … to actually meet you in this world at last.” Max wants to tell her that he doesn’t understand what she means, but then he realises he has already met her in his dreams, not in his nightmares ‘that [scare] him so deeply, he [will] do anything to stay awake’ but in his ‘blue-eyed lady dreams’ which help him remember his father.

In his uniquely ‘Thompsonesque’ style Colin Thompson has created memorable and endearing characters, while gently parodying popular culture in a way that adds layers to the story.   For instance children may compare Hull, the talking cardboard submarine, to the submarine in Looking for Atlantis, while adults will chuckle at how many characteristics Hull shares with Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Fans of Thompson’s writing will enjoy spotting many of the themes and characters from earlier picture books and if, while you are reading this book, you visit Colin Thompson’s website (www.colinthompson.com) you will find many other appearances such as grandmother’s dog Neville, who is remarkably like Thompson’s real-life dog Max, now deceased.

I have to admit that there were times during my reading when I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere fast, and I thought Thompson could have chopped out a chapter or two, but when I got to the end I realised why it had to be as it was.  Pepper Dreams is a story not unlike Alice in Wonderland which also takes lots of twists and turns, and can be quite disconcerting in its nonsensical nature.  The reader has to be as exasperated and confused as Max to fully appreciate that even things ‘that seem totally illogical make perfect sense if you find the right way to look at them.’  This is really what the book is all about – ‘keeping an open mind’, taking chances, and learning how to move on. 

Pepper Dreams is as delightful and magical to read as the front cover (illustrated by Thompson) would have you believe.  It is a book that will read aloud well, as a bedtime story for 7-10 year olds or as a class serial. Thompson’s quirky characters are engaging and will, I believe, generate much discussion. Luckily this is the first in a series, so if you loved Max and his friends and relatives at Saversnake, there will be more opportunities to contemplate some of the most charming relationships I have read about in ages.

Other books by this author:
Round and Round and Round and Round (Hodder, 2002)
The Violin Man (Hodder, 2003)

Review by Sarah Mayor Cox

© 2003 Sarah Mayor Cox