Lindsay Eager, The Pickpocket and the Gargoyle, Walker Books Australia, January 2023, 448 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781529507089
This is a complex and multi-layered book. Duck, the main character, (so-called because she was pulled from the river as a baby) is part of a gang of street children – called the Crowns – who pick pockets, steal and hustle in order to stay alive. They move from town to town and squat in disused buildings. The setting for their living quarters in the story is a half-built cathedral, abandoned by the Church and stonemasons many years before when money ran out. Here they make a kind of stable home, though nothing is ever really permanent for this group. Their leader, Gnat, is the one who makes all the major decisions and it is he who decided that they come to this town, Odierne, and set up in the cathedral. Gnat is almost a kind of Fagin figure as he decides how each of the gang will fulfil their role as thief, pickpocket, or scammer and where they will operate. However, we learn later that he too is really just an abandoned child, staying alive as best he can.
The Prelude is narrated by one of the gargoyles on top of the abandoned cathedral and he appears again and again. He appears to be curmudgeonly but is basically kind-hearted – taking care of some baby birds, for example -and worried that he hasn’t been able to fulfil his task of protecting the people of the town. In some ways, the gargoyle is analogous with Duck. In his final, heroic act, he fulfils his mission to protect and, is, in a sense set free. Duck too learns to spread her wings and develop confidence and courage.
The gargoyle also narrates other parts of the book. His sections are in the first-person as he acts as a kind of omnipotent presence, able to relate stories from the past and to provide commentary on what he can see happening in the town in the present. The parts that are not told by him are in the third person. These sections contain a lot of dialogue that helps to enhance the reader’s understanding of characters and their interaction with each other. In addition to the change of narrator, there is also a change of scene in that parts of the book are told during particular seasons, each season introduced by a kind of frontispiece with illustrations denoting the season.
Duck is the youngest of the gang, often the butt of Gnat’s bullying, especially as she speaks very little. She is protected as much as possible by Ash, who, despite his young age, is a kind of father figure to her as he was the one who rescued her from the river. Duck is the one chosen by Gnat to undertake their biggest scam – she is apprenticed to a baker but her task for the Gang (the Crowns) is to steal money and bread each week. The baker is enormously generous to Duck and has her taught to read and write, teaches her to make different sorts of bread and even comes to leave her in charge of the shop. Duck blossoms under the attention but her loyalties are sorely tried as she tries to please both the gang (her first ‘family’) and the baker, who treats her as her own daughter.
The novel is set in the past when thieves were put in the stocks, when guilds governed the lives of artisans, tournaments fought by knights as entertainment, when transport and life were slow – but far from uneventful. Gang warfare exists though, just as it does in more recent times and Gnat’s gang are subjected to a kind of takeover by a gang known as Red Glove.
This is a book about loyalty and choices, particularly having one’s loyalty tested when required to choose sides. It is also about belonging and community; about what makes a home and what constitutes a family. It is a multi-layered book that will benefit from discussion in a class but is also a rich, individual reading experience.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
