Family Roundabout

Richmal Crompton created William, the pugnacious anti-hero of thirty books selling over 8 million copies in her lifetime; but their author once hinted that a ‘Frankenstein monster’ had ambushed her forty novels for adults. Persephone Books publishes a 1948 novel about the life of two families during the inter-war years. Instead of seeing William at odds with adults, we are shown the matriarchs around whom their families spin; but whether they direct their children gently or forcefully, in the end they have to accept them as they are.We see that families can both entrap and sustain; that parents and children must respect each other; and that happiness necessitates jumping or being pushed off the family roundabout.