Why You Should Read 'The Willows in Winter'
And a brief lesson to haters in general.
Its no secret that my writing has been heavily inspired by The Wind in the Willows. It remains one of my very favourite novels, and you can read of my past gushings here and here. Its a scandal that Kenneth Grahame did not write more adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Toad, a breach which William Horwood would hope to mend nearly a century later with his sequel The Willows in Winter.
Recognizing the lofty position which I’ve assigned to this first lonely volume, I was admittedly reluctant to give a fair shake to a sequel penned by another author, especially one born out of time. In his Author’s Note, Horwood would attempt to bridge this gap by touting his geographical proximity to Oxford and and the river Thames, in this way expressing a special affinity to Grahame.
In hindsight, most of my quietly held reservations might have been labelled puritanical by some, perhaps even fairly. I had not read Duncton Wood, where Horwood had first gained his renown. And so, when I came across The Willows in Winter at a used bookstore, the solitary concern which I was able to articulate to my son was that you simply can’t write a Willows sequel with a reformed Mr. Toad; that Grahame had somehow scorched the earth when he rehabilitated one of the Western canon’s greatest characters.
But there it was, a paperback with a price tag almost begging me to take it home. Flipping through the book, I was immediately disarmed by the brilliant illustrations by Patrick Benson. The plentiful artwork was wholly appropriate and worthy of E.H. Shepard’s inspired drawings in the original book. I was sold.
And Mr. Toad! Horwood’s sequel picks up what Grahame put down. He introduces some fresh faces and expounds upon those too briefly established in the original. And he so ably captures the Arcadian riverbank which Grahame set the first tale, preserving his commentary on the lusty animals of those opulent Thames river estates.
I’m won over, and can heartily recommend The Willows in Winter.
I’ve since acquired the hardback first editions of all Horwood’s Willows sequels (he wrote four of them!) to go alongside my Wind in the Willows anniversary edition on my book shelf.
Frog of Arcadia is my own fully-Illustrated novel, told in the tradition of The Wind in the Willows, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Redwall. You can take a gander through the following link.
