‘Hide & Seek’ is about the Pickles family’s – and more specifically, Harry’s – painful negotiation with the disappearance of four-year-old Daniel. The sudden loss of his brother skews the coordinates of Harry’s formerly safe world and comfortable upper middle class existence. Once a close, tightly-knit family, the Pickles fall apart as they move through the various phases of denial, grief, and eventual acceptance that every family faced with such a loss has to go through before it can return to any semblance of normalcy.

In Harry’s case, the situation is further complicated by the fact that he feels responsible for what happened. Weighted down with guilt, he is tormented by inconclusive dreams, wets his bed, finds it impossible to ‘poo’ and is startled to find that his parents, once easily the best-looking around, are scruffy, argumentative, and irrational. Worse still, they are so consumed with horror and disbelief that they pay little attention to Harry’s needs – something which, at least in his mother’s case, Harry attributes to the fact that she blames him for Daniel’s disappearance.

Life after Daniel, as seen through Harry’s eyes, is as crazy and tortuous as one of those scary rides at Legoland: nothing is what it seems, and even simple, everyday things like eating, cooking, or getting dressed, are impossible to accomplish. As the situation at home progressively deteriorates, Harry’s vision of the world is seriously compromised by his grief. During the Nottinghill Carnival, he very nearly stabs a man whom his friend convinces him is the one who harmed Daniel. Later, when Mo brings home a baby she claims she gave birth to, Harry convinces himself that ‘Little Boy’ is really theirs despite evidence to the contrary.

Heavy issues for a nine-year-old. Even playing with his new friend, the rich and spoilt Terry, doesn’t distract Harry from the problems that beset his household: Terry bullies Harry into various scenarios where he has to ‘capture’ the man who took Daniel. As the blindfolded Harry spins around in Terry’s garden, it is easy to see their childish game as a metaphor for the Pickles’ situation: Dominic, Harry’s father, admits to Otis, his brother-in-law, that it is the ‘not knowing’, the groping around in the dark, that will ultimately destroy him.

In ‘Hide & Seek’, Sambrook’s sensitive portrayal of the world through nine-year-old Harry’s eyes is utterly convincing and, at times, heart-wrenchingly painful. (Be prepared to shed a few tears.) Harry’s perception is at once naïve and wise beyond his years.

Still, the dark moments are offset by ones of levity. Harry’s exasperated conversations with Biffo, Daniel’s imaginary friend, are a case in point, as are scenes where Harry’s ‘gang’ of friends – Peter, Piggy, and Terry – work out their differences and negotiate the complex politics of the school yard.

In the end, although a novel primarily about grief and loss, ‘Hide & Seek’ is as life-affirming as is Harry’s uncle, fireman Otis, who marries his Aunt Joan just before Daniel’s disappearance. The dependable Otis helps Dominic and Harry get back on their feet as they struggle to come to terms with their grief. As each member of the Pickles family works out his/her issues, there is hope of continuity and renewal:

Joan wiped my tears off with her oniony thumb, then light flashed out of her, she yanked my hand and pulled her jumper up.

‘Feel this,’ she said, and pressed my hand into her belly. ‘Feel this, the baby’s moving.’

So?

I felt… nothing.

‘Press harder. You can’t hurt it. Relax your hand and press harder.’

If it mattered so much to her I’d go along with it. As long as it didn’t mean touching her titties.

Nothing happened. Not a thing. And then a feeling, quick and shy but real, like the twitch of my line when the mackerel takes the hook. Made me laugh. Laugh out loud.

‘That’s your cousin,’ she said, and I knew it was true.

Shahbano Bilgrami is a freelance writer and copy editor who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. Aside from being a regular book and film reviewer, she has had poetry published in An Anthology (OUP 1997) and has authored/contributed to several children’s textbooks during her eight-year period as editor at Oxford University Press, Pakistan. She is currently working on her first novel.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.