A House of Children

To some degree this is an autobiographical novel. In Joyce Cary's own words, 'This book began in fact, as it begins on the page, with recollections suddenly called up by a fuchsia with its characteristic movement, stiff and springy, in a brisk wind. I was taken back to Donegal where fuchsia is a hedge plant. From an English garden it took me not so much to memories as to actual sensations of childhood, and I noticed, not for the first time, that these sensations are not always very clearly related to the memories.' Dunamara is a gaunt house on the Donegal coast across the lough from Derry. It is a rugged, windswept setting, but for six-year-old Evelyn Corner, brought here each year for his holidays, it is an enchanted place. A world away from England, school and duty, Evelyn and his brothers, sisters and cousins, can wander at will all summer long. Around them always, investing every moment with beauty and magic, is the miraculous, metallic presence of the sea. Here is innocence and excitement. Only occasionally is there a hint of another life awaiting them, a presentiment of adulthood with its attendant responsibilities and disappointments.
"A House of Children" was the winner of the 1942 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.