Children often raise invisible barriers around themselves when life becomes overwhelming. These imaginary walls can protect tender feelings after a fallout with friends, sudden changes at home, or the ache of families dramas. In many ways, coping looks like retreating behind a shield of silence or sarcasm – until someone or something cracks open that barrier. Let’s take Ned for example, with problems at home and with friends, walls are erected… except that Ned discovers that he can walk through walls.
Ned Harrison Arkle-Smith has an ordinary life. He lives with his mum, dad and his two sisters. When his parents announce that they plan to separate, the walls go up – literally go up as the family home gets split into two: walls go up through the centre of the house, dividing the once large family home into two smaller house, splitting family life into alternating weeks on each side. While his sisters are coping well with the new living and family arrangements, Ned isn’t and his world edges toward chaos. It doesn’t help that during this difficult period his best friend is also changing, getting new friends and wanting to do his own thing. Plus, he also has an annoying new neighbour, and a bully is making his life a misery. And nobody is doing what Ned wants – leaving him grumpier, bossier, angrier and much more exasperating than he was before (although you just can’t help liking him). All this frustration manifests into an uncanny ability, his superpower – he finds that he can walk straight through walls. Suddenly he is a wallboggler and Ned uses this new gift to prank bullies, sway friendships and spy on the very people he feels betrayed by, all while wrestling with anger that threatens to swallow him whole.
Walking through walls is the easy bit …
it’s the rest of my life that’s hard.
– Emma Fischel / Walls
Overall, I loved reading Walls by Emma Fischel – I thought that is was an excellent and fascinating read dealing with issues of family and friendship breakdowns, going through changes, anger and control issues, all in a very unique way. Walls is a story of divorce and frustration looking at the power of anger, pent-up emotions, stubbornness and the real and imaginary walls we put up to protect ourselves and our loved ones. While it has strong emotional and empathic themes, it is also a story packed with magic, sibling love, bullying, school experiences, danger, a poltergeist and smugglers tunnels. That might seem a lot to deal with in one book for middle grade readers, it isn’t! Despite the complexity of it, I thought that it is was written very well, easy to read and understand and an extremely enjoyable and powerful read.
With so much change happening in Ned’s life, he can’t see the benefits of it – it is playing havoc with his emotions, resulting in his anger building up inside him which is released out onto the walls. His anger manifests itself in such a way that the raw emotional power of it reveals itself in a new skill when his foot, then his hand and eventually his entire body goes through the wall. With this discovery he becomes a wallboggler (his term, not mine)! But such is the power of his emotional state with all the upheaval in his life, he doesn’t use this new talent for good deeds, he uses it to play pranks to try and win back his best friend and to take his frustrations out on his parents.
You would think that this would make Ned an unlikeable character, but you can’t help feeling for him and have sympathy with him, his emotional state and his struggles. He loves order and control, and his wallboggling ability allows him to try and take back some of that control as he tries to manage the people around him (for reasons that do become clear in the book, I won’t spoil the story by divulging them).
The book is written in the first person, told from the point of view of young Ned. Walls is a unique, original and humorous story with a protagonist who often gets things wrong with his need to control everything and everyone. His parent’s separation is the catalyst for his bad behaviour, although the real issue lies deeper, he is having trouble with his emotions and anger and doesn’t know how to deal with them, and it is having an effect on everything he does – although it is always someone else’s fault rather than his.
It takes his annoying new neighbour to call him out on it and it leads to him asking himself some searching questions, followed by a very dangerous situation that sees him having to put someone else first to accept that he can’t control everything, that change is inevitable and that walls, the very real brick ones or the ones we put up inside our own minds, can be used to help or hinder.
I loved reading this book. While it deals with some very difficult themes, it does it with humour and empathy, engaging the reader with some very relatable experiences. It has good pacing with an enjoyable collection of characters. Ned is a complex character who has some very unlikeable traits, but he is also extremely interesting and you can’t help but rooting for him, hoping that he finds his way through his emotional, anger and control issues. I thought that is was a thoroughly enjoyable read with a very clever mix of drama and fantasy.
Walls is an extraordinary multi-layered story, dealing with some very real and relatable childhood issues in a unique and enjoyable way. It captures the unsettling reality of divorce and change through a magical lens, showing how upheaval can push a child to seek to gain some sort of control where they otherwise feel powerless. It weaves a wonderful metaphor between the imaginary and physical walls that we all construct when we are hurt or scared and have trouble dealing with things.
With adventure, magic, relatable emotions, humour and though-provoking messages it is a perfect accessible read with genuine heartache and whimsical fantasy for young page turners aged 9+.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £6.99 (Paperback)
For more information, visit www.emmafischel.com. Available to buy from Amazon here.
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