100 Books that Influenced Me, #44: The Borrowers

[osprey_archer]

Lo these many years ago, back in… 2012… I signed up for a 100 posts challenge, on the topic “100 Books that Influenced Me,” and then petered out in the early forties.

But it’s occurred to me that if I wrote a post a week, I could finish the challenge in a little over a year, and after all I love writing about my favorite books, so why not? Mostly I write about books that I’m reading now; it will be nice to give myself the opportunity to talk about old favorites.

This week: Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, which was my very favorite thing when I was small. The book (actually a sequence of five books) is about a family of tiny people, less than a foot high, who live in the walls of human houses and support themselves by borrowing (well, stealing) from their human hosts.

The heroine is Arrietty Clock, who at fourteen (which seemed to me a most impressive age) has never left her family’s home under the clock in the kitchen of a quiet Victorian country home. But that’s about to change: in the absence of a son, Arrietty’s mother insists that Arrietty needs to learn to borrow, just in case something happens to her father. Because, after all, something has happened to her father: he’s been Seen, seen by a full-size human being, a boy (recuperating from an illness he contracted in India - the most classic Victorian backstory) whom the Clocks didn’t know was in the house until too late.

I loved the adventurous aspect (leaving her home for the first time to experience the wide world!), the setting (this book might be the genesis of my love of Victorian England), the details about tiny people living in a big world: Arrietty rolling an onion down the corridor from the storeroom so her mother can cut a single ring off of it to put in their soup. And of course Arrietty herself: she’s a thoroughly satisfactory heroine.

The US edition is beautifully illustrated by Joe and Beth Krush, who also illustrated Elizabeth Enright’s Gone-Away Lake. I poured over the pictures of Arrietty’s overstuffed Victorian parlor, all built up of bits and pieces repurposed for the use of tiny people: spools of thread used as stools, postage stamp pictures of Queen Victoria hung on the wall as portraits.

I was so taken with the idea of tiny people that I beguiled many hours in kindergarten envisioning the adventures of tiny people living in the school walls. I spent some time worrying what they ate during summer vacation, when we weren’t around to provide half-eaten rice krispie treats for their delectation, before deciding that they probably migrated to the park up the hill behind the school and lived in bucolic bliss till we all trundled back to school.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, I remember 100 Things! I petered out far sooner than that, but mine was vaguer and involved icon-making which was probably not a plan, really. More book talk is always good!

[osprey_archer]

I feel that resurrecting it at this point is really like dragging a corpse out of the grave and demanding that it become a zombie, but... hey, why not?

[thisbluespirit]

I feel that resurrecting it at this point is really like dragging a corpse out of the grave and demanding that it become a zombie, but... hey, why not?

Zombie AUs are perfectly valid in fandom!

[eglantiere]

oh man, borrowers! i haven't read it when i was a child, but i had a vinil recording of some story about a boy who befriends a tiny living-in-the-wall girl, making some furniture for her and so on, and i was fascinated. have you seen ghibli adaptation of borrowers?

[osprey_archer]

I have seen the Ghibli adaptation! It's pretty good - naturally I have small quibbles, which is probably inevitable when someone adapts something I like so much, but they're things like 'Why did they move the story out of the late Victorian age?" Which may be aesthetically important, but it doesn't really affect the core of the story.

The 1997 live action movie, on the other hand, is an abomination and set me against adaptations for years.

[asakiyume]

I love that you took the Borrowers idea and put it in your school--that's marvelous.

Little tiny hidden houses are wonderful; I love seeing pictures of different people's imaginings of them. I'll have to look for the illustrations you mention.

[osprey_archer]

Later on I read a the Littles series (which is basically the same idea, expect the Littles also have tails for some reason - probably because tails are cool) and there's one book where the Little children go to school, which was fun but not quite the same.

[troisoiseaux]

As I was reading your post, I was like "gosh, this sounds super familiar, I must have read this book but how did I forget it was set in Victorian England?" but now that you mention it, I think it was actually the Littles!

There was another, somewhat similar book I read as a kid and am blanking on the name of, but it was about a family of tiny porcelain dolls, and then another family of new, modern plastic dolls "moved in" and the two little girl dolls became friends and had Being Tiny In A Big Human World-type adventures. So, a little bit Borrowers meets Toy Story.

[osprey_archer]

Aaaagh that story about the porcelain doll becoming friends with the plastic doll and having adventures sounds like it would have been my jam when I was a wee little thing, but I never read it. Missed opportunities!

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I remember seeing both sets of books as a kid and being all ? ? ? There can be two takes on the same premise ? ? ?

[silverusagi]

I loved The Littles! I think I had (have) all the books. I must have read The Borrowers as well when I was younger, but it was The Littles that made an impression on me.

[katherine]

This is lovely to read, and a good reminder to re-read the series.

[osprey_archer]

It's such a great series. I also loved the second one, when Arrietty finally gets to experience the outdoors in all its beauty and terror.

[katherine]

That one might be my favourite, if I had to pick out of the series. Actually probably my second favourite, after the model railway home.

[skygiants]

I have very little actual memory of having read The Borrowers, but my parents assure me that I did at the age of five and then immediately went looking for Borrowers behind electric sockets ... which may indeed be why I have little actual memory of having read The Borrowers.

[osprey_archer]

Mmm, yes, those two things might be related.

Electrical wires might be quite a hazard for Borrowers. I wonder if they do a little undercover repair work of frayed wires & things like that just to ensure they don't get electrocuted on their daily borrowing rounds.

[kore]

ACK!

[kore]

Oh, I like the 100 books thing!

I think I only read the first two? books in the series, but I remember being absolutely enchanted by the illustrations and the uses for small objects and how Very Victorian it all was. It was a brilliant little gem.

[osprey_archer]

There's one particular picture of Arrietty frolicking among the flowers in the second book - once they've moved to the outdoors and she can frolic as much as she wants instead of gazing longingly through her grating - which sticks in my head as just marvelous.

[carmarthen]

OH MY GOD, MINE TOO. (I was also obsessed with making miniatures, although we never finished assembling a dollhouse for them.)

[osprey_archer]

THE BEST BOOK. A PERFECT SET UP FOR ENDLESS IMAGINED ADVENTURES.

I never got into making miniatures, but I've always been irresistibly drawn to them. In the Art Institute of Chicago there's a whole suite of miniature rooms decorated to look like rooms in the days of yore and the first time I saw them I instantly thought, "So there's an entire colony of Borrowers who live here and make use of these beautiful rooms after hours, right?"

[carmarthen]

Riiiiiiiight??????? Ugh, there's some really marvelous stuff people are making.

I have a whole box of tiny specimens and someday I want to make a tiny museum for them. The problem is that the buildings are not compact at all (which I guess is why people do room boxes - I've thought about starting with a 19th century scientist's office, but part of my problem is that I have zero interest in making furniture).

[osprey_archer]

a 19th century scientist's office

That would be the most delightful miniature room.

[carmarthen]

Right? I've seen all kinds of offbeat room boxes, but nothing like that, although that doesn't mean no one's done it. If I had more money I'd just buy the furniture and focus on the rest, but eh, got plenty of other stuff on my plate at the moment.

Also might be relevant to your interests

[hunningham]

Mistress Masham's Repose is a (much neglected) novel by T. H. White. It's the adventures of a girl who finds a group of Lilliputians living a secret life in an old folly. As well as the Lilliputians, there is an evil governess, and a run-down stately home, and a misplaced will, and shenanigans.

This is a book I loved as a child, and was delighted to rediscover as an adult. It stands up to adult reading, which isn't true of all beloved childhood books.

[silverusagi]

This reminds me, I never read the fifth Borrowers book...

[osprey_archer]

Better late than never!