The Six Bad Boys by Enid Blyton

The Six Bad Boys by Enid Blyton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve known about this for a while and this week, finally picked up a copy of it. It is, shall we say, a lot? I don’t think I’ve ever read a Blyton dedicated to the chairman of the East London juvenile court or indeed, any children’s book ever dedicated to a justice of the peace. Maybe I’m missing out? I don’t know. But anyway, this is a ride and it starts with that dedication and goes all the way through. Blyton does social commentary (this book is “written for the whole family” and the whole family better hecking read it). Blyton goes brutal (and for an author who could be very brutal, that’s a statement). Blyton scars an entire generation? (I was reminded very much of Roald Dahl’s Guide to Railway Safety which scarred my generation entirely…).

Okay; so. Plot. Two new families move in, one on either side of the Mackenzies who, inevitably, have a Charming Dog called Frisky (Blyton gotta Blyton). One of the new families is a couple with three children and the other, a single mother with a son. Each family has their problems, however, and things rapidly escalate to dramatic, sad proportions. Like – super sad. People walk out on each other, children get abandoned, people end up hiding out in shelters by the canal? And for some reason packed lunches are the route to delinquency?

This isn’t remotely coherent so far and I do apologise for that. It’s because this book was clearly written to make a point and that point is made but also, it’s kind of terrifyingly made. It is powerful and sad and genuinely challenging, particularly if you think about Blyton’s own personal experiences in her life (what was she if not a working mother?). There’s just this weight to everything here that makes you wonder if this is an exercise in Working Out Feelings or whether the author even saw that similarity to her own situation – and not just to her professional situation but also her personal?

The Six Bad Boys is a startling, often oppressive thing. The portrayal of women in it is complicated at best as is pretty much everything else. Yet it still works and this, I think, is a typical thing for Blyton; even when all of the horrible bits and the complicated stuff stare you in the face, the story still works. It works. It works, even when you need to write a scattergun review, even when you don’t remotely know how you actually feel about it, it works.

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