The Clockwork Twin by Walter R. Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "Ladies and gentlemen, friends, humans and animals..." Walter R. Brooks' fifth Freddy the Pig book, Freddy and the Clockwork Twin (1937) begins when Adoniram, an unhappy and lonely boy "about your age," is sent outside by his unloving and exploiting uncle and aunt to check the river level during a flood, he hears a voice calling "Help," mounts a summerhouse, and rescues a little brown dog clinging desperately to the railing. The dog can speak. His name is Georgie, and he's been swept away on the flooding river from his companion, another boy called Byram who strangely enough looks just like Adoniram. Before Adoniram can carry Georgie back to the riverbank, a large pine tree floating on the flood grabs the summerhouse and carries it off downriver. As they travel down the flooding river, Georgie cultivates Adoniram's optimism and sense of adventure (the boy's deprived childhood having made him pessimistic): "why don’t you think about how maybe they [all the awful things that may happen] won’t happen? Why don’t you think about nice things that may happen? It doesn’t cost any more." (The Freddy books are full of life wisdom like that.) Soon Georgie and Adoniram rescue a drowning rooster who speaks with a British accent (though he can also "talk American as well as you guys") because he was born as an egg in England but hatched in America. (The Freddy books are full of quirky humor like that.) The trio finally step from the summerhouse into the window of a flooded department store, where they meet Freddy the pig and his friend Jinx the black cat. The two animals were away from home (the Bean Farm in upstate NY) on a business trip wherein Freddy was trying to figure out how to market his new invention, pockets for animals, when they were trapped by the flood in the department store. For a few days the new friends enjoy living in the store, sleeping on display furniture, playing games, reading books, and eating good food to their heart's content, with Freddy trying to teach Adoniram about jokes and how to laugh (the boy has never encountered anything funny in his grim life). The idyll ends when the flood waters begin receding, people start returning to that part of the city, and the boy and the animals decide to head for the Bean Farm where Freddy and Jinx live with other talking animals, because Freddy knows that Mr. and Mrs. Bean will be happy to adopt Adoniram. The novel then works out the attempts of the animals and the Beans to adopt Adoniram, a task complicated by the boy's uncle and aunt and by Mr. Bean's inventor brother Uncle Ben's construction of a clockwork boy called Bertram who looks just like Adoniram and requires a small animal engineer like a rooster to control him and speak for him from inside his hollow chest. (This is the first time Brooks plays with sf tropes in the series.) The story also concerns the attempts of the animals to locate Georgie's original boy Byram, a quest complicated by the participation of Boomschmidt's Colossal and Unparalleled Circus (whose uncaged animals help run the show), a generous wealthy woman called Mrs. Church (who has a good sense of humor), some gypsies (who are too conveniently villainous), and Byram himself (who has a phobia of houses). The novel has plenty of Brooks' varied humor. He writes amusing authoritative sounding aphorisms featuring animals and or people, like the following: --"Mrs. Wogus [a cow] was inclined to be philosophical. That is, she liked talking without thinking much what she was talking about." --"Most boys yell more than they talk, especially when they’re playing." --"Like all cats, and many people, he wasn’t much interested in any kind of work or game that he wasn’t good at." He writes comical scenes and situations, like Ronald explaining why he keeps his British accent, Ronald's wedding to the daughter of Charles the pompous rooster, Charles sneaking inside Bertram to give a deafening speech, Adoniram's uncle trying to spank Bertram, Uncle Ben trying to perfect an unignorable alarm clock, Freddy attending a meeting of the trustees of an orphanage in disguise (not for the first or last time in the series) as an old lady. He even writes dialogue fit for a Marx Brothers movie, as in the following conversation between Mr. Boomschmidt, a cow called Mrs. Wiggins, and Leo the lion: "Well, well, I guess we’ll have to go into conference about this." "Where is that?" said Mrs. Wiggins. "Oh, dear me, it isn’t a place; it’s a state. Like--what is it like, Leo?" "Like being in love," said the lion. "Or in difficulties. Or--" "Now you’re just being confusing," said Mr. Boomschmidt. "Good grief, being in love and being in difficulties--why they’re entirely different." "Not entirely," said Leo. "But, chief, I was just illustrating--" "Well, you’re not supposed to illustrate--not when you’re in conference. Now I call the conference to order. Anybody got any suggestions? No? Then what game’ll we play?" Fans of Freddy the Pig and readers new to the series should enjoy this book, especially if they like well-written, witty stories about talking animals that are underpinned by serious themes about human nature and life and are set in an idyllic rural small-farm New York State. Although Charlotte's Web (1952) has more pathos, the influence of Freddy and the Clockwork Twin on E. B. White's novel is discernable in much of the humor and style, as is evident when comparing two sentences from Brooks' earlier book with the famous last two sentences of White's: "You hardly ever find a pig who is an expert swimmer, but then you hardly ever find one who is a good detective. Freddy was both." And then, "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." View all my reviews
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