Chocky

Title: Chocky

Author: John Wyndham

Number of pages: 153

Started: 30 March 2008

Finished: 1 April 2008

Opening words:

It was in the spring of the year that Matthew reached twelve that I first became aware of Chocky. Late April, I think, or possibly May; anyway I am sure it was the spring because on that Saturday afternoon I was out in the garden shed unenthusiastically oiling the mower for labours to come when I heard Matthew's voice outside the window. It surprised me; I had no idea he was anywhere about until I heard him say, on a note of distinct irritation, and, apparently, of nothing:

'I don't know why It's just the way things are.'

Plot summary:

Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself, and they waited for him to get over it. Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky - the person who lived inside his head.

Summary taken from Amazon

What I thought:

I didn’t really know what to make of this book. In some ways I really liked the simplicity of it. John Wyndham takes very ordinary English life and finds the extraordinary in it and there is something I find really impressive about that. But having read and loved another of his books The Day of the Triffids, I was a bit disappointed by this book. If this had been the first I had read, I am not sure it would have inspired me to read his others. There was something about it that was just a bit too mundane.

It was an interesting premise though, a boy ‘hears’ a voice in his head – is it an imaginary friend, is he possessed, he is mentally ill or is it something totally different? I found the way the author approached this to be really interesting and thought it showed the way that adults try to justify these things – and it leaves you with the question “what if this was something different, something real? What if we have missed out on a whole world that’s out there by limiting ourselves to what our own mind can comprehend? Thought provoking.