Tower and Town, September 2022 (view the full edition)Patrick Gale - Mother's Boy
The story focuses on Charles' mother, Laura, who raises Charles pretty much singlehandedly, working as a cleaner and laundress. She soon realises her son is highly talented. He starts to write poems and plays and becomes proficient at the piano, playing for local bands. After taking a very tedious job in the local electricity board shop, he joins the Navy in 1940 as a coder and escapes from the very closed society of Launceston to experience the violence of war, and form relationships at work. All the time he is writing in notebooks and composing poems in his head. After the war, he trained as a teacher and went back to his old school in Launceston, once again living with his mother. The book demonstrates what a private person he was, yet friendly and approachable. He went on to become a full-time writer in the 1970s, dealing with issues of faith, his wartime experiences and later landscape, travel and friends. He forged friendships with other writers such as Siegfried Sassoon and Ted Hughes. Patrick Gale is a prolific author of novels and short stories, perhaps best known for The Place Called Winter, Take Nothing With You and Rough Music. He has lived in Cornwall since 1988, a county described repeatedly in his books. He is Patron of the Charles Causley Trust. Virginia Reekie |
This novel reflects the early life of Cornish poet Charles Causley (1917-2003). His parents met when they were both in service in 1916; they married and settled in Launceston. His father soon joined up and was sent to France. Charles was born a year later. His father finally returned but was stricken with tuberculosis, could not work and died early.