The Runaways by Victor Canning ~ 1971. This edition: Scholastic, circa 1975. Paperback. 300 pages.
My rating: 6/10
This was something of a nostalgia trip, being a book I remember reading and re-reading in my late grade school years. Though it has lost some of its original magic on this four-decades-later adult re-read, there still exists a certain appeal, though the set-piece situation (misunderstood teenager with a working class background wrongly accused of a crime and on the run from the authorities) is very much of a muchness with so many other books in the youth market genre of the 1960s and 70s.
Victor Canning’s twist is that his protagonist’s adventures are twinned with those of an escaped cheetah, and though the improbability of the whole scenario is exceedingly glaring to me as a cynical grown-up who notices the many logistical gaps in the story, the tale works very well for its intended readership.
From The Runaways page on John Higgins’ extensive Victor Canning website:
Samuel Miles, known as “Smiler”, aged 15, has been falsely convicted of stealing an old lady’s handbag. He runs away from an approved school (young offenders’ prison), is recaptured and escapes from the police car during a thunderstorm. He is determined to stay free until his father, a ship’s cook, returns from his current voyage in nine months time and can help to clear him of the theft charge. The same thunderstorm brings down a tree in the wildlife enclosure at Longleat, allowing a cheetah called Yarra to escape.
On their first night of freedom, Smiler sleeps in the loft of a barn in which Yarra also takes shelter. We then follow their parallel stories, Smiler using a cottage in the village of Crockerton which belongs to the absent Major Collingwood, and Yarra learning to hunt again and finding a den in the Army firing range at Imber on Salisbury Plain. Smiler gets a job at a kennel. Yarra gives birth to cubs. Major Collingwood returns and Smiler goes to stay with the dog’s meat man, Joe Ringer, who teaches him a lot of country lore including poaching skills. Meanwhile Major Collingwood is intrigued with the signs of occupation at his cottage and starts a quiet investigation…
Vignettes from the story have stayed with me in crystal clarity from my youthful reading days: the escape from the police car in the thunderstorm; the cheetah’s escape at the same time only a few miles away; Smiler’s roaming through an empty cottage and his happy discovery of a jar of coins in the study and his use of those for “running money” and the subsequent replacement; the cheetah learning to craftily live with army maneuvers on Salisbury Plain.
Smiler outsmarts the well-meaning authorities, and fades away at the end of the tale, leaving things open for possible sequels, of which Canning did write two: Flight of the Grey Goose, 1973 and The Painted Tent, 1974, respectively concerning Smiler’s further adventures on the run and in temporary sanctuary in an animal sanctuary/castle in Scotland (with wild geese for the animal interest), and then with a Romany fortune-teller and an injured peregrine falcon.
I found The Runaways a rather simplistic read for an adult, though this is doubtless the reason it has retained its popularity as a recommended school novel for “reluctant readers”. I haven’t read the two other books in the trilogy, nor do I feel particularly compelled to seek them out, though I would be pleased enough to read them if the opportunity arose.
What I am really interested in, however, is the rest of Victor Canning’s body of work. The Smiler trilogy is something of a later-career departure for this writer, for his main claim to fame was as a prolific producer of adult fiction, from his comedic, best-selling, 1934 pseudo-travelogue, Mr Finchley Discovers His England, and a few similar books, to a large number – something like fifty – of thrillers and short story collections of varying degrees of darkness, a great number of which were successfully made into movies and television productions. He also penned a well-reviewed Arthurian trilogy.
Victor Canning kept himself busy writing up until the end of his life – he died in 1986, at the age of seventy-five – with his last novel, Table Number Seven, being finished by his wife and sister, and published posthumously in 1987.
Looking over the list of Victor Canning’s titles on the excellent website already referred to, some titles sound more than a little familiar. I may perhaps already have a few of these tucked away amongst the boxes of yet-to-be-shelved books from my parents’ attic. I look forward to investigating this writer in a mild way in future, though I will need to make note of his several pseudonyms – Alan Gould and Julian Forest – to enable me to identify his books for further examination.
A promising writer to add to the vintage-books look-for list.
Is anyone already a fan?
Leaves & Pages 
Glad to see The Runaways being discussed. It is rather a special book.
But you say (as a cynical adult) that the improbability of the scenario is glaring and there are logistical gaps. What gaps? What improbability? I live about ten miles from the places where the story is set and have visited Longleat and Imber several times, and I find the story fairly plausible on the whole.
Congratulations on a worthy blog.
JJH
Good morning, John. (It’s 6 AM here in BC, Canada.)
I am very pleased to hear from you; may I repeat how much I enjoyed finding and exploring your Victor Canning website.
Let me see if I can clarify my remarks regarding what I thought were the “improbability” and “logistical gaps” of the story.
As an adult who has read a remarkable number of similiar “juvenile” stories throughout the years (always for my own enjoyment, I hasten to assure you – I am not a professional teacher or a children’s librarian or anything of the sort) I found that the adventures of Smiler and the cheetah Yarra follow a very similiar pattern to many other “personal redemption of a societal outcast/loner/misunderstood youth through a relationship with an animal” youth-market fictions. And though I do give Victor Canningf credit for thinking his plot through in great detail (for the most part) and providing logical explanations for how his young human hero is able to create a new identity for himself through a series of serendipitous “lucky breaks”, it started to feel that it was all a little too good to be true, with everything falling into place just a bit too neatly.
Here are a few examples of details that bugged me – CAUTION – SPOILERS for those unfamiliar with the story.
The Major writing very informative postcards meant for his housekeeper conveniently addressed (but only sometimes!) to his own cottage was a big sticking point for me this time around. Lovely for Smiler’s planning to know so many pertinent details, of course, but what a chancy way of communicating coming from the hyper-organized Major!
The hair dye/skin tanning solution find seemed a tiny bit too convenient as well, though I must admit that Smiler’s made-up-on-the-fly excuse of the egg-dying was very clever when later he is questioned on why he is always buying so much dye at the local Woolworth’s.
The hands-off benevolent adults who ultimately made Smiler’s continued charade possible felt a bit too good to be true. The gruff but kindly “dog lady”, her not-quite-so-clever-but-oh-so-kind hausfrau sister, and the poacher – just a bit too stereotyped, don’t you think?
The whole thing with the rescued cheetah cubs after Yarra’s demise felt rushed and not well detailed – this is where my want-to-believe had the most trouble. Would the taming process really be as simplistic as Canning portrayed it? There were an awful lot of coincidences involved here as well, from Smiler’s just happening to have a whole roast chicken in his knapsack when discovering the collapsed den (and the cubs, raised on raw wild prey, instantly recognizing the cooked chicken as “food” – even if very hungry, how truly likely would that be?), to the poorly-capped well handy for disposal of Yarra’s body. Smiler’s easy access to large amounts of raw meat due to his living with the dog’s meat man is rather handy – but didn’t Joe notice his supplies being steadily borrowed from? And skipping over the rest of the cub saga, their release back into the Longleat cheetah enclosure was my biggest “wait a minute” moment. Felines of all sorts are notorious for the males killing unattended youngsters – the male cheetah’s easy acceptance of his half-grown offspring did not feel totally plausible, though it did provide the “feel good” ending to make up for Yarra’s death.
I’ll allow you the plausibility of the original cheetah being able to survive in the areas as described – Canning does go into enough detail with his description of Longleat and Salisbury Plain to make a good argument for the physical details of the story being reasonable.
An awful lot is left up to luck, though, and those bits stuck out all over to me this time round, though as a young reader I happily accepted them as completely possible.
Have you read Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain
Though very different in its setting and details, I found it to be a similar sort of story in atmosphere and probability – nothing to say that things couldn’t theoretically work out as the author portrays them, but full of convenient people/incidents smoothing the way for the young hero.
All of this niggling aside, The Runaways is a rather unique book, and one which I think retains its appeal today. It is just different enough from other similar youth-market adventure/survival tales to keep one’s interest, and the details and explanations Canning provides show how much thought he put into it.
As an adult reader I wish it were just a little more complex – for the perfect example of what I mean by this take a look at Monica Dickens’ Cobbler’s Dream (the original book, not the TV series or the wishy-washy sequels) which is a good example of how a sentimental sort of troubled-youth-is-helped-by-animal tale can be just a little deeper and more satisfying as the ages and expectations of its readership increase.
I am looking forward to exploring more of Victor Canning’s adult works. For me The Runaways was definitely a nostalgia piece, but that it was so memorable over so many years is to my mind a good omen regarding this author’s promise.
Good points. I’ll have to re-read the book.
And one thing I admit: It would be rather unlikely that a teenager driving a commercial van would be able to get a ticket to drive through the big cat enclosure at Longleat today.
JJH
2nd try at a reply – had a nice long comment all written out and then the power unexpectedly went out and I lost it. Now what was it I wanted to say? 😉 Mostly that yes, I had a hard time accepting the ease of Smiler’s release of the cubs back into the Longleat enclosure. I wondered about the logistics of gaining entry, and how one could stop, fiddle around with the doors on the van and the process of enticing the cubs out without being witnessed. Today the whole place must be equipped with surveillance cameras; obviously not an issue in the early 1970s! But my greatest sticking point is still the convenient ease with which the author has the other cheetahs accept the cubs. It feels like wishful thinking, and a nice easy way to tidy up a complicated situation. Smiler’s trundles off in his borrowed van with nary a backward glance; I wonder that he didn’t have qualms about the possible awful fate of his adopted babies if the other cats acted aggressively towards them. One can’t argue blissful ignorance, as the lad is reported to have researched cheetah behaviour earlier in the story…
But it makes a great story nevertheless. And where would we be if writers didn’t indulge in flights of fancy and “wouldn’t it be interesting if…” moments when coming up with their plots?
I’ve been poking around looking for one of the Canning suspense novels which I am 99% sure I have somewhere – very curious as to his “adult” works.
After reading the first paragraph, I was hoping that the crime the working class kid had been accused of was going to be CHEETAH THEFT, and that in fact the cheetah had just left with the working-class kid because she likes him. I guess that wouldn’t have done anything to improve your discontent with plausibility issues, though…
🙂
[…] already hold this writer’s most famous juvenile – The Runaways, 1971 – in nostalgically good regard, and I did know that he was also the author of a substantial […]
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