A Boy Off The Bank

by Geoffrey Lewis

First book of the Michael Baker series, A Boy Off The Bank tells a story of England's canals in wartime, of the pressure and pain, the humour and resilience of the boating people. Both tragic and heart-warming, it charts the progress of an arduous and difficult job against the broader panorama of worldwide events, seen from a narrowboat's back cabin through the eyes of a young boy:

Ten-year-old Michael has had enough - mentally and physically abused by his drunken father, treated as a skivvy by his hard-pressed mother, he's taken all that his miserable life can throw at him. The final blow falls when his pet dog is taken away as well; on a January night in 1940 he sets out to commit suicide. But all does not go according to plan...

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2006

About the author

Geoffrey Lewis was an English Turkologist and the first professor of Turkish at the University of Oxford. He is known as the author of Teach Yourself Turkish and academic books about Turkish and Turkey.

Lewis was born in London in 1920 and educated at University College School and St John's College, Oxford (MA 1945, DPhil 1950; James Mew Arabic Scholar, 1947).

At St John's College Lewis initially studied Classics. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he served from 1940 to 1945 as a radar operator in the Royal Air Force. Posted primarily in Libya and Egypt, he taught himself Turkish through local Turkish acquaintances, from the Turkish newspaper Yedi Gün available in Cairo, and from Turkish translations of English classics sent to him by his wife. He returned to Oxford in 1945 with his newly acquired interest in Turkish and on the advice of H. A. R. Gibb took a second BA degree in Arabic and Persian as groundwork for Ottoman Turkish, which he finished with first-class honours (not achieved in this double subject since Anthony Eden in 1922) in just two years. He spent six months in Turkey before pursuing his doctoral work on a medieval Arabic philosophical treatise at St John's College.

Turkish was not taught at Oxford before Lewis was appointed to his academic post in 1950; it was through his efforts that it became established in the Oxford syllabus of Oriental studies by 1964.

Reviews

[Rikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this whilst on a canal holiday. It is poorly written, and lacks a good storyline. It reads like the first attempt of a student on a creative writing course. Everyone on the canals were too nice to be true - quite unrealistic. Humans have shades of good and bad. Indeed the whole story line was very predictable and towards the end the "twist" that was designed to allow the author to bring in the two real characters to which the book was dedicated was awful.

That said, to appreciate "A Girl at the Tiller" which is a good storyline and reasonably well written, you'll need to read this to get up to speed with the characters.

[Malachi Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting fictional book that combines the history of the decline on the English working canals with a family saga of life on the boats. An insight into a lost way of life and the trials and tribulations of the working boats.

[Georgiana Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this story, author badly skipped a few years in a haphazard way when he had written the first half so beautifully but my love of the canals and now these fictional families means I would read this again.