Julie Hearn: "Follow Me Down"

The square mile of the City of London is full of doorways into the past for those who can open them. Julie Hearn has her eyes peeled and her ears tuned for the language of a more turbulent time in her richly textured first novel.

A handbill for Bartholomew Fair freak show in the early 18th century prompts the time-slip adventure tale of outcasts, prejudice and scientific advance on two sides of "the gap" into which Tom stumbles in his grandmother's cellar. In a house "next to The Black Raven in West Smithfield" Astra the "Changeling Child", so frail that she's transparent, is put on show by her cruel keeper. Her "family" are the Gorilla Woman, the Bendy Man and the Giant. When the Giant dies, Tom's 21st century technology saves him from the grave robbers. Three centuries away Tom's mother, being treated for breast cancer, takes on her own mother and the world in fury at her changing body being consigned to freakdom by others' ignorance and embarrassment.

Tom has an only child's responsibilities of mediator and mender in his emotionally-laden home life and in the alleyways of 1717. Hearn's evocative names and authentic oaths will attract Harry Potter fans, as will the use of a strange and perilous world within arm's reach. But the only magic is man-made, and the outcome is all the more satisfying for being historically sound.

Times Educational Supplement - 11 July 2003

The male teenage hero of this novel must contend with both his mother's encroaching breast cancer and his own adventures as a time traveller in the 18th century. The past is both an escape for him and, like his mother's illness, a further challenge to his developing masculinity. This book is gripping, gentle, funny and downright scary at times. It also captures brilliantly the gulf between children's concerns and what their parents think is on their minds.

The Guardian - 27 August 2003

Julie Hearn's Follow Me Down is a corker of a novel, original and rambunctious.

The Observer - 3 August 2003

For once that old standby of press release epithets is justified. Julie Hearn really is "one of the most exciting new voices in children's literature"...

The Sunday Telegraph - 20 July 2003

The terms "gripping" and "atmospheric" could have been coined to describe this breathtakingly accomplished first novel [...] Hearn cleverly uses both strands of her narrative to show how Tom learns to look beyond appearances to discover what is truly important in life. She points up uncomfortably our continuing fascination with the grotesque and also shows how the work of men like Flint, though repulsive, has aided understanding of illnesses like the breast cancer that has ravaged Tom's mother.

Hearn, a single mother, lived on benefits while writing this her first published novel. So is she destined to be as rich as the Queen and as famous as the Beatles? Hopefully not, for her sake, but this wonderful book should certainly rescue her from penury! More please.

The Glasgow Herald - 5 July 2003

... what marks her out is her historical accuracy and emotional depth.

The Daily Mail - 25 July, 2003

Oxford seem delighted with their new title and its author [...] They have even secured an imprimatur from Philip Pullman, who can be relied upon to eschew sensationalism. Julie Hearn is 'someone whose work I always read with pleasure'. So why all the fuss? Well for once here is a voice which is a genuine original. Follow Me Down is driven by an imagination which slides wildly from 18th to 21st century, from the fearful adventures of a bunch of Bartholomew Fair freaks to three modern generations struggling to connect with each other.

[...] Keeping a grip on the plot isn't easy, leaping back and forth across the gap in the cellar, racing about the dripping alleyways and confronting with Tom anything from his mother's 'false boob' dropping into the pot-pourri to the abuse of Astra by her 'gentlemen visitors'.

Who the readers of this book will be isn't easy to decide either. If they are Tom's age they'll need to be able indeed for A-level students and adults could well be absorbed by the book too, if they relish a crazy fairground ride of a read; but then, critics have been wrong so often about what readers can manage, as Northern Lights has taught us. So here's a new, wild, free voice. Maybe it's not always entirely intelligible... but no matter. Confusion is appropriate to this story, for it reflects young Tom's experiences. At the end he knows 'absolutely and for always that anything is possible'. It won't hurt to try that on for size.

Books for Keeps - 1 July 2003

One of the best children's books this year.

Sainsbury's Magazine - 1 August 2003

The superbly-drawn characters have warmth and, although written for young readers, adults too will find it hard to put down.

Choice Magazine - 1 July 2003

This is a wonderful novel which superbly captures both the sights and smells of Hogarthian London and the very realistic feelings of a young boy who almost hates his mother for being ill and is trying desperately to deal with the demands of both worlds [...] it's a novel that stays in the mind as we come to understand, with Tom, 'about loving people, and the fear of loss that goes with it, like a flipside to joy.'

School Librarian - Autumn 2003