The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
I came across this book when I was about 10. I remember finding it on the classroom library shelf (I think second shelf down and about a third in from the left – the memory is that vivid!) and feeling that it was in some way important. It was the first story I read which narrated real and recent events.
When I was little my mother had worked to help D.Ps (displaced persons as the refugees in the aftermath of the Second World War were then known), so awareness of what had happened in the near past had seeped in a little (accompanied by a resentment that my mother sometimes seemed more interested in her little brown suitcase of cyclostyled letters and the many phone calls her work involved).
The Silver Sword helped me understand what she had being doing, and if it didn’t dissolve all the resentment, that was no fault of the book (or my mother)! It doesn’t dwell on the full horror of that time, focusing instead on the aftermath, a family making their way back together through the wreckage of war.
Ian Serraillier was a Quaker and had been a conscientious objector and the overall heft of the book shows, not so much the folly of war, but its sadness. This is not a tract; he lets the story make its own point. He writes like a journalist describing with emotion held in check, but allowing the reader to join in the events and feel the powerful emotions they give rise to.
For all its realistic detail it has a magical quality, revealed not least in the motif of the silver sword, a tiny object that acts as an amulet and sees them through all troubles. And there are many troubles, plenty to enthral this 10 year-old, as three siblings struggle to survive the harshness of a world in chaos. Then there’s their friend Jan, orphan Jan, tough, cunning, selfish, vulnerable and far more deeply caring than he can let himself know. He brings the book to life, while Ruth, the eldest girl who has to become an adult overnight, and does so impressively but believably too, is its heart.
The matter-of-fact illustrations by C. Walter Hodges complement the book so well, giving substance to the reader’s imaginings and adding their own clarity and realism to the author’s.
No wonder it has remained in print for nearly seventy years.
